When Nockchain launched, the goal was simple: prove that zero-knowledge proof of work could work in the real world.
In less than a year, the network has generated more than 1 billion zero-knowledge proofs, and Nockchain has emerged as one of the most significant proving networks anywhere. What started as an experiment in proof generation is now a live chain and has successfully laid the foundation for something much larger, a real proving market.
That was phase one, which we jokingly called Dumbnet.
Phase two is about building the products, infrastructure, and developer ecosystem that make proof of work useful.
Over the next 4–6 weeks, the Nockchain ecosystem will roll out new research, infrastructure, products, and protocol upgrades designed for the next stage of growth.
What’s ahead
This month, the official Nockchain whitepaper will be published.
This is an important moment for the ecosystem. The whitepaper gives the broader public a clearer picture of the long-term vision for Nockchain, the design logic behind zkPoW, and the direction the chain is moving next. It also gives builders, miners, and partners a stronger foundation for understanding where this all goes from here.
Alongside that, we’ll be announcing the formation of the Nockchain Foundation, made up of founding Nockchain team members and trusted ecosystem partner representatives. It’s purpose is to coordinate ecosystem growth, support development, and steward Nockchain through its next stage with a broader base of aligned participants.
A number of ecosystem products are also preparing to launch or expand, including:
- Nockchain Fakenet + Developer API, led by Southwestern Pool Supply Co., with a Fakenet faucet collaboration between Nockbox and SWPS
- Iris Wallet V2 from Nockbox, Base swap support, multi-account and a brand new developer SDK. The wallet developers and users need for a matur ecosystem.
- Flock, a new collaboration between SWPS and Nockbox designed to accelerate ecosystem development and create new ways to compensate builders working on Nockchain
Since launch, Nockchain Base Bridge fees have been collected by the four core ecosystem companies. We have unanimously decided to redirect all bridge fee revenue to Flock, retroactively and going forward. Every fee collected since genesis will fund builders, not companies.
On the core development side, Zorp is leading with the rollout of the PMA upgrade — Persistent Memory Architecture / demand paging — which is expected to reduce node memory usage to roughly 16GB regardless of blockchain state size, making it materially easier for lower-memory machines to participate in the network. Zorp has also developed a new networking protocol for faster data transmission, providing 20x faster block syncing throughput.
Work has also formally begun on completing the Nock ZKVM, a major long-term milestone for the chain. This is the layer that opens the door to real application development, broader proof utility, and the first true generation of Nockchain use cases. We are targeting this work toward the end of the year, and we’ll share progress and updates along the way.Core development has also expanded beyond Zorp, with meaningful contributions now coming from team members across the broader ecosystem.
A protocol upgrade for Phase 2
As the network has matured, the economics of zkPoW have matured with it.
When Nockchain launched, proving was CPU-based. In the months since, the community and ecosystem pushed proving hard and fast into GPU territory. Efficiency improved by orders of magnitude. Simply put, the early goal of zkPoW bootstrapping a competitive proving market was achieved faster than almost anyone expected.
That matters, because it changes what the protocol should optimize for next.
Phase one optimized for raw proofpower.Phase two will optimize for demand, usage, and ecosystem growth.
As part of that transition, a protocol upgrade is coming in May with three major changes:
- Block time: from 10 minutes to 2.5 minutes
- Difficulty adjustment: from epoch-based retargeting to ASERT
- Emission model: designed to better support phase two priorities
The move to 2.5-minute blocks means materially faster settlement and a more responsive chain. For a system designed around proof posting and data availability, that is real infrastructure.
The move to ASERT (Absolutely Scheduled Exponentially Rising Targets) replaces abrupt retarget cliffs with a per-block exponential smoothing. Difficulty responds continuously rather than in sudden jumps.
And on emissions, the goal is not to change the hard cap or abandon monetary discipline. It is to better align issuance with what the ecosystem now needs most.
Under the new model, each block’s neutral budget remains 2,048 NOCK. That budget will split into:
- Base reward (80%) — 1,638 NOCK/block to miners as the guaranteed floor
- Protocol fund allocation (20%) — 410 NOCK/block, held by the newly formed Nockchain Foundation in a Multsig and governed by Zorp, SWPS, Nockbox, and LambdaCollective
That protocol fund will be controlled by the newly formed Foundation and will be dedicated to the activities phase two depends on: proving demand, namespace adoption, developer grants, product growth, research, liquidity, partnerships, and ecosystem coordination.
This allocation is not permanent. It lasts until the chain transitions to the next fully useful proof-of-work puzzle built on the upgraded Nock ZKVM, at which point the model reverts.
The hard cap and broader monetary policy remain unchanged. What we gain is the network is becoming faster, more adaptive, and more intentional about what it is trying to build toward.
What phase two means
The story here is bigger than any single release.
This next phase is about giving Nockchain the things every serious ecosystem eventually needs: clearer vision, stronger coordination, better tools, faster infrastructure, and actual surfaces for builders to create demand on top of.
Phase one proved zkPoW works. Phase two is about building the products that make proof of work useful.
Over the next 4–6 weeks, we’ll be sharing much more about each of the announcements above.
Stay tuned. Get ready to build.