Today we’re open-sourcing an experimental copy of Nockchain under the MIT license in anticipation of an intended Dumbnet Launch on May 19, 2025.
The Nockchain Dumbnet will be fair-launched with no pre-mine by the Nockchain Foundation. That launch will begin the Zero-Knowledge Proof of Work (zkPoW) mining competition.
In zkPoW, miners compete to create Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). Anyone in the world will be able to mine $NOCK by running the Nockchain open-source code.
Enterprising miners are encouraged to optimize the performance of the Nockchain client. We expect that, over time, the zkPoW competition will incentivize the commodification and standardization of Nock proofs.
You can now get a Nockchain node and testnet running on your machine in just a few commands, following the instructions in the monorepo on Github.
The open-source code is experimental and Zorp Corp makes no guarantees as to its behavior.
We expect there will be consensus-breaking changes to the code prior to launch, so please follow along if you intend to be running a node at Genesis.
Understanding Nockchain
The world has entered a new era of permissionless digital economies. Over the past decade, blockchains have used replicated state machines to achieve trustless settlement, execution, and data availability. These new computational commodities have transformed global finance, allowing developers to conduct permissionless economic experiments with never-before-seen speed and scale. Markets have been unleashed upon the world by the advent of these “World Computers.”
Broadly, we see two competing models amongst today’s blockchains. Should blockchains be lightweight trustless settlement engines like Bitcoin or heavyweight global state-machines like Solana? The two are not mutually exclusive, but in tension. Ethereum’s approach to splitting the baby is ambitious, but has led to concerns over ecosystem fragmentation, technical debt, and the economic incentives of rollups.
We believe the future of blockchains is lightweight trustless settlement of heavyweight verifiable computation. The only way to get there is by replacing verifiability-via-public-replication with verifiability-via-private-proving. Proving happens off-chain; verification is on-chain.
Nockchain is a lightweight blockchain for heavyweight verifiable applications.
Taking Stock
In August, we first shared a developer preview of the NockApp framework, specifically Crown and Sword, giving developers their first look at our application framework.
By October, we released the first version of Jock, our scripting language that compiles to Nock. Jock provides a friendly, practical programming experience while integrating seamlessly with the Nockchain ecosystem.
In December, we successfully completed our internal devnet, printed our light paper for investors and friends, and opened our technical forum and Telegram community.
A lot of people have been waiting to see the code and kick the wheels, so we're delighted to finally share Nockchain with the world.
Get Involved
- Explore the GitHub repository
- Say hello in the Technical Forum
- Connect in our Telegram
