February was a month of great progress for the Nomos project, with advancements in research, development, and infrastructure. The team made strides in Cryptarchia research, economic modeling, consensus development, and service improvements, bringing the project closer to production readiness. Here’s a breakdown of the key updates.

Nomos Bedrock

The Cryptarchia v1 protocol, common ledger, and native execution model specification documents passed the review stage and became finalised. Research efforts continued for Cryptarchia V2 with in-depth studies of several recent papers on consensus. Work on the economic model also progressed, with RDP requirements becoming formalised and a valuation model under development to refine economic incentives. The team also initiated work on a P2P network specification.

Another focus was the chain synchronization specification, with an initial document drafted to formalise the synchronization process. Furthermore, the first draft of the Bedrock Services Special Zone specification was completed, along with the Mantle implementation, which now includes performance benchmarks.

Technical advancements in the Bedrock included improvements to the clock service, with the time service being merged and an NTP-based backend implemented. Consensus development saw ongoing efforts to enhance node recovery, alongside optimizations in the consensus relay entities.

Nomos Bedrock Services

Research efforts expanded into dispute resolution for executor agreements and enhancements to the Proof of Role (PoR) specification. The team also made progress in refining the NomosDA V2 protocol, producing a comparative study between Nomos DA v1 and ZODA, as well as documents defining probability calculations and ZODA parameters. The Blend Network saw continued progress, with advancements in economic incentives, the creation of a calculator to determine the likelihood of deanonymisation, and a refined message encapsulation mechanism.

DA service improvements focused on enhancing connection management, sampling verification through HTTP APIs, and blob commitments verification. Meanwhile, improvements to the Overwatch Rust package improvements included general cleanup, renaming of crates, and updates to licensing. The connection monitor was enhanced to detect unhealthy or malicious peers, while subnetwork balancing mechanisms were integrated to improve network reliability.

Nomos Zones Ecosystem

The SwapVM proof of concept progressed with its initial implementation, refining cross-zone transfer mechanisms and incorporating Risc0 proof prebuilds. Research into permissionless note mechanisms and alternative PACT swap structures continued, aiming to enhance interoperability within the ecosystem.

Road to Production, Testnet, and Tooling

As the team pushes towards the initial release, February saw significant progress in the development of synchronization specifications and node recovery mechanisms. Debugging tools were enhanced with the addition of a panic hook, while optimizations in the CI workflow resulted in a more efficient feedback cycle. The use of workspace-wide dependencies streamlined development processes, and mempool recovery implementation remained a key focus area.

Node improvements included mempool recovery enhancements, Rust version pinning, and formatting rule enforcement. A Dockerfile update and fixes for end-to-end tests strengthened system reliability. Additionally, networking refinements focused on stream utilisation in DA replication, improving data availability processes.

The whitepaper also saw continued development, ensuring that documentation remains up to date with ongoing research and development efforts.

Looking Ahead

With February’s advancements setting a strong foundation, the Nomos team is well-positioned for the next phase of development. March is expected to bring further improvements to core infrastructure, enhanced economic modeling, and deeper refinements to data availability and consensus mechanisms. Stay tuned for further updates as we continue building towards a decentralized future.