ZK-rollups are revolutionizing blockchains, but until now, it has been a real challenge for developers to deploy them. That's why we are thrilled to introduce the alpha release of the Sovereign SDK, a development toolkit that allows developers to launch their applications as zk-rollups.

What is the Sovereign SDK Alpha Release?

This is an MVP release focused on a few core features that will give you a feel for the developer experience of the Sovereign SDK. Concretely, we've built:

• A demo rollup and prover

• Data availability layer adapters for Celestia and Avail (Thanks to the Avail team for implementing their adapter!)*

• A ZKVM adapter for Risc0**

• A module system that enables you to compose off-the-shelf modules and custom logic to build your application as a ZK-rollup

• Ready-to-use banking, storage, account, and centralized sequencing modules

• A simple and extensible RPC interface for reading application state

• A database layer to persist application state to disk, and an authenticated state store using a Jellyfish Merkle Tree

• And lots of documentation to make it as easy as possible to build your own rollup

It is important to note that the Sovereign SDK has not yet been audited and should not be used in production under any circumstances. During alpha, we will maintain API stability and compliance with semantic versioning only on a best effort basis.

What's next?

Over the next few months, we will be heads down productionizing our client: fixing known bugs, optimizing, improving developer experience, adding missing features like bridging and decentralized sequencing, and thoroughly testing the codebase.

Our goal is to reach beta (with APIs stabilized) in a year.

Why Sovereign SDK?

Once ready, the SDK will enable applications with:

• Guaranteed and Scalable Throughput: The Sovereign SDK will ensure a scalable, verifiable, and censorship-resistant backend that keeps pace with your application's growth, sparing your users from exorbitant fees.

• No Need to Bootstrap Validators: Developing your application is challenging enough. The Sovereign SDK will eliminate the need to persuade validators or worry about liveness issues if they fail to show up.

• Fast, Cheap, and Trustless Bridging: Users shouldn't worry about funds getting stuck in an application or paying unnecessary transfer fees to liquidity providers. With the Sovereign SDK, you will bid farewell to week-long withdrawal periods while securely scaling your application.

• Full Customizability: Use your token as the gas token or add custom transaction processing logic. The Sovereign SDK will empower you to fully customize your stack, freeing you to build a limitless application.

• Reduced Platform Risk: It's difficult to pick winners in the DA and zk-proof systems. Thankfully, our agnostic design will let you deploy rollups with any compatible DA layer (including Ethereum!) and zk-proof system, mitigating risks.

Ready to explore?

Check out the Sovereign SDK and start building your zk-rollup demo app! And fill out our early partner interest form if you have an idea you'd like to brainstorm with us.

The Internet of Rollups

We imagine a future where verifiable and censorship-resistant blockchain applications run side-by-side, scaling and communicating seamlessly.

Our mission is to enable anyone to build zk-rollups, not just cryptography experts or protocol engineers.

*: Tutorials to help you get started with the Avail adapter are coming soon.

**: The Risc0 adapter is currently limited as Risc0 does not support recursion yet.