TL;DR: The Taiko protocol has a defense-in-depth system. Proving is limited to a small whitelist of provers, the prover hardware is locked to an approved program, the Bridge enforces a daily withdrawal limit, and no single person or company can change the protocol. The attacker did not break the proving math or find a bug in the bridge contracts. The attack began off-chain with an exposed signing key and an attestation check that failed to reject a prover running in debug mode. Together those let the attacker forge proofs. The attacker used that ability to falsify the age of a proposal. By design, Taiko’s contracts allow any party to prove a proposal that has been unproven for more than five days. This is an intentional safeguard against the protocol depending on any single party, so others can keep the chain progressing even if our provers go offline. By making a new proposal appear to have crossed that five day threshold, the attacker triggered the safeguard and bypassed the whitelist. Withdrawal limits slowed the drain and the emergency pause stopped it. More than $11 million in bridge and vault funds never moved; the loss was contained to about $1.75 million. The attack path is closed and every user was made whole, as the bridge was recollateralized 1:1 and reopened on July 2. Subsequently, the Unzen upgrade that makes a ZK proof mandatory on every block is scheduled to activate on August 6, 2026.

Timeline

Jun 21, 18:38 — Our prover submits its last legitimate proof. (L1 block 25,367,808, tx)

Jun 21, 19:04 — Attack begins. The attacker registers two rogue debug-mode prover instances and, in one transaction, submits the first fraudulent proof and files 10 forged withdrawal claims against the fake state. All 10 are accepted but left unpaid: the attacker's batching contract submits each with too little gas to run the payout, so the Bridge records them as valid 'retriable' claims to be cashed out later via retryMessage(). Nothing is paid out yet. (L1 block 25,367,938, tx)

Jun 21, ~19:27 — First automated alerts fire (reorg and finality-stall). We investigate them as a liveness / prover issue initially.

Jun 21, 22:07 — Funds start leaving. About three hours later the attacker cashes out the 8 token claims via retryMessage(), one transaction each: USDC 649,761, crvUSD 156,832, USDT 138,140, CRV 126,161, iZi 2,140,403, WETH 20.70, WBTC 0.43, weETH 0.53. Funds begin leaving the Bridge and ERC20Vault; the 999 ETH and 110.5M TAIKO claims stay retriable and never pay. (L1 block 25,368,853)

Jun 21, 22:12 — We open an internal call. Team members start joining.

Jun 21, 22:35 — Our CTO notices the L1 Inbox's (the L1 contract that records and finalizes L2 state) finalized state has diverged from the canonical chain, and escalates from a liveness investigation to a security investigation.

Jun 21, 23:02 — Confirmed as an exploit of the permissionless proving path. We notify the Security Council and ask members to stand by to sign an emergency pause.

Jun 21, 23:11 — We draft the first emergency pause proposals and circulate them to the Security Council for signing. (Proposals #29 and #30)

Jun 22, 00:44 — We publish a security notice on X, warning that Taiko's bridges can no longer be relied upon. (X post)

Jun 22, 02:11 — Our preconfers stop proposing blocks, forcing the attacker to submit the final fraudulent proof then stop, about 3.5 hours before the pause. In total the attacker finalized about 30 fraudulent checkpoints across roughly 6,100 fake L2 blocks. A single checkpoint was sufficient to prove any withdrawal, so the number of checkpoints did not affect the scale of the exploit. (L1 block 25,370,060, tx)

Jun 22, 04:37 — Enough signatures from the SC members are collected (7/9), but the previous proposals would revert due to an authorization issue. We create a new encrypted emergency DAO proposal to pause the Bridge and ERC20Vault. (Proposal #31)

Jun 22, 05:40 — Contained. Enough Security Council signatures are collected again and Proposal #31 is executed: the Bridge and ERC20Vault are paused. No further withdrawals are possible. (L1 block 25,371,104, tx)

Jun 22, 07:04 — Follow-up X post: the incident is contained, the Bridge and vault are paused, and the earlier guidance no longer applies. (X post)

Jun 22, 07:16 — We create a second encrypted emergency proposal to disable forced-inclusion processing and permissionless proving and proposing as an additional safeguard. (Proposal #32)

Jun 22, 09:24 — The second emergency proposal is executed. (L1 block 25,372,225, tx)

Jun 23, 21:49 — A full police report is filed with the Singapore Police Force. (Report No. A202606247010)

Jun 25 — OpenZeppelin completes its incident response review. Recovery contracts deployed.

Jun 29 — Proposal #34 executed: debug SGX fix live, fraudulent checkpoints invalidated, stuck claims resolved, chain restored to pre attack state. (Proposal #34)

Jun 30 — Bridge recollateralized 1:1 in kind. (Bridge, ERC20Vault)

Jul 2 — Proposal #35 executed: Bridge and ERC20Vault unpaused. Normal operations resume under conservative quotas. (Proposal #35)

Jul 7 — Unzen upgrade proposed to the DAO (Proposal #36). (Proposal #36)

Jul 14 — Security Council approves Unzen; community veto period opens. (Proposal #36)

What happened

The defenses that were in place

Taiko is built with several independent layers of defense:

• Prover whitelist: only a small, trusted set of addresses can submit proofs on-chain. This is a security measure we have in place until we fully transition to ZK, our guest program is fully audited, and zkVMs are mature enough.

• Hardware attestation: prover hardware is locked to an approved measurement of our code, so an arbitrary program cannot pass itself off as a Taiko prover.

• A daily withdrawal limit: the Bridge caps how much of each asset can be withdrawn in any 24-hour window.

• No owner: the protocol is ownerless; no key, person, or company can change it unilaterally.

Most of these held during the attack. One did not, exposing a gap in our threat model.

Root cause: an exposed key and an unchecked debug flag

The attack started off-chain, in how one of our SGX provers was set up. Two conditions had to line up:

1. The enclave signing key was committed to a public repository. An SGX enclave is identified by two measurements: MRENCLAVE, the hash of its code, and MRSIGNER, the hash of the public key that signed it. The private key behind our MRSIGNER (a 3072-bit RSA key in docker/enclave-key.pem was committed to our public repository, so anyone could sign their own enclave build and still present our expected MRSIGNER. On its own, the exposed key was not enough to mount an attack because attestation should only accept a valid program.

2. Attestation did not reject debug-mode enclaves. On registration we verified that a prover's MRENCLAVE and MRSIGNER matched the approved values, but not that the enclave ran in production rather than debug mode. A debug-mode enclave provides no memory protection. Its operator can read and modify everything inside it, so SGX's hardware guarantee no longer holds.

With both gaps present, the attacker took our genuine prover code (matching MRENCLAVE), re-signed it as a debug-enabled enclave using the exposed key (matching MRSIGNER), and registered it on-chain. Attestation accepted it because it never checked the debug flag. Running in debug mode, they fully controlled the enclave and the proof-signing key it holds, letting them produce correctly signed, correctly attested proofs over a fake version of our chain. At 19:04 UTC they registered two rogue debug-mode prover instances and submitted the first fraudulent proof in the same transaction (0x2f44dc1b...277260, L1 block 25,367,938).

Bypassing the whitelist: forging a proposal's age

We are no strangers to the risks of SGX and similar systems. That is why, until the guest program is fully audited and zkVMs are mature enough, we keep a strict prover whitelist, so that only trusted addresses can submit a proof on-chain.

As we announced back in December 2025 when we reached 100% ZK coverage for the first time, ZK was implemented as a soft requirement. Finalization required at least two proofs, and in edge cases where a ZK proof could not be produced, a block needing too many proving cycles or a zkVM bug, both proofs could come from SGX so the chain could keep finalizing rather than stall. That fallback is the layer this attack ran through. The attacker never touched our ZK cryptography. Unzen closes the gap by making ZK a hard requirement, so at least one of the proofs finalizing every block must always be ZK.

The attacker was not on the prover whitelist, so why were their proofs accepted?

The system includes one deliberate exception. If a proposal stays unproven for more than five days, anyone may prove it. This is an intentional safeguard so the chain keeps finalizing and never depends on any single party.

The weak point was that the contract measured a proposal's age from a timestamp carried inside the proof, and once the attacker could forge proofs, they could forge that timestamp too. This check did not hold up against an attacker who could already forge proofs, making a recent proposal appear old enough to cross the five day threshold. The contract believed the chain had gone unproven for days, opened the permissionless path, and accepted the attacker as a prover. The whitelist was never broken directly. It was bypassed by forging the number that decided when the whitelist could be skipped.

Forging a fake chain and draining the pool

From there the rest followed. With forged proofs accepted, the attacker finalized a fork of our L2 that exists on no honest node, and kept extending it. Each one wrote a new fraudulent state root to the L1 SignalService (the contract that relays L2 state to L1), and the attacker proved each withdrawal against the fake state they had just finalized. The same SignalService the Inbox writes to when it finalizes is the one the Bridge reads when it pays out a withdrawal, fake state in, fake withdrawals out.

In total the attacker submitted 39 forged withdrawal messages, 36 of which paid out (35 cashed out by the attacker, and one 18-ETH message picked up by a third-party MEV bot)

Why the damage was contained

So how is it possible that only a portion of the funds were drained?

Two things contained it: the Bridge's daily withdrawal limits, and the emergency pause. The limits (and the attacker setting a too small gasLimit that marked their messages as retriable and consumed the ETH quota) did the heavy lifting where they were configured.

In their opening batch, alongside the first token claims, the attacker filed a 999 ETH withdrawal. It never paid out and was later force resolved during recovery, together with the two stuck TAIKO claims, but in the attempt it consumed almost the entire day's ETH allowance. Everything taken after it could only trickle out as the allowance slowly refilled, which is why the ETH loss stopped at about 278 ETH over several hours instead of draining the entire Bridge.

The TAIKO limit did the same for TAIKO: the attacker could take only 1.99 million of the roughly 110.5 million TAIKO held in the vault, leaving about 98% untouched.

A few lower-value tokens were not subject to a daily limit and were drained in full. Because the protocol is ownerless there was no master switch to flip, but the Security Council and the DAO could act, and did, pausing the Bridge and the vault through emergency proposals. Together these layers are the reason this was a roughly 1.75 million dollar incident and not a larger one.

• Technical detail: why ETH was throttled but some tokens were not?

  The daily limit is enforced at a different point for ETH than for ERC-20 tokens, which is why the failed 999 ETH still mattered.
  In the opening tx the attacker set a gasLimit different to zero (so that a different address can claim), but lower than the 800k that the contract enforces. This marked all the attacker’s withdrawals as retriable.
  For an ETH withdrawal the Bridge consumes the daily allowance inside processMessage, before it even attempts the transfer, so the 999 ETH attempt burned about 999 of the 1,000-ETH daily allowance even though it failed and paid out nothing. For an ERC-20 withdrawal the allowance is consumed inside the token vault, which only runs when the withdrawal actually succeeds, so the token claims the attacker left retriable at 19:04 consumed no allowance until the attacker cashed them out at 22:07.
  On-chain, the ETH allowance dropped from 1,000 to about 1 ETH at 19:04, while the USDC, USDT and TAIKO allowances were untouched at 19:04 and only fell when those claims succeeded later. The net effect: the attacker's own failed ETH withdrawal self-throttled their ETH drain to the slow refill rate (about 41.7 ETH per hour), while the limit constrained tokens only where one was both configured and exceeded (TAIKO).

The attack, end to end (sequence diagram):

The exploit in numbers

The attacker drained about USD 1.75 million worth of tokens, mostly ETH plus stablecoins, TAIKO, and a few other tokens.

Figures above are the amounts released to the attacker; for TAIKO and USDC the net reduction in the vault's reserve was slightly smaller, because a small amount of each was legitimately bridged in by other users during the same window.

The ETH figure includes 18 ETH that never reached the attacker: one forged message set an oversized 18 ETH relayer fee, which a third party MEV bot (coffeebabe.eth) processed and received. Roughly 278 ETH went to the attacker. The bot returned the funds: 17 ETH is back in the Taiko treasury and 1 ETH went to the block builder.

The rest stayed safe. At the time of the pause the Bridge still held about 991 ETH and the ERC20Vault about 108.5 million TAIKO, together more than $11 million. The three stuck fraudulent claims, the 999 ETH and the two 110.5M TAIKO withdrawals, were force resolved during recovery and can never execute. The bridge was recollateralized 1:1 and reopened on July 2. If you hold funds bridged through Taiko they are fully backed, and you do not need to do anything.

Addresses we have linked to the attacker:

• Key transactions

  • Setup: rogue prover registration + first fraudulent proof + 10 forged withdrawal claims, all left retriable: 0x2f44dc1b… (block 25,367,938, 19:03:59)

  • Token cash-outs via retryMessage() (~22:07, one transaction each): USDC 649,761, crvUSD 156,832, USDT 138,140, CRV 126,161, iZi 2,140,403, WETH 20.70, WBTC 0.426, weETH 0.53; plus a later USDC 26,000

  • ETH withdrawals: about 278 ETH paid to the consolidation wallet across ~25 withdrawals as the daily allowance refilled, starting with 130 ETH (block 25,368,908, 22:18) and trickling out through ~02:10

  • TAIKO drain + off-ramp: 1,990,000 TAIKO drained, then forwarded through laundering hop 0x5FBc60… to the MEXC deposit address 0x3CC936…

  • Token → ETH swaps: stolen stablecoins, CRV and WBTC swapped to ETH via the attacker's swap contract 0x9108…; proceeds sent to the consolidation wallet

  • Filed but never paid (since force resolved via Proposal #34): 999 ETH (claimed in 0x2f44dc1b…) and 110.5M TAIKO ×2 (0x2f44dc1b…, 0xabed9edc…)

  • 18 ETH fee grab: a forged message whose oversized relayer fee was processed and received by coffeebabe.eth; it never reached the attacker and has since been returned.

  • Last fraudulent proof: 0x68ff8e07… (block 25,370,060, 02:10), after which the attacker stops

  • Full activity: every transaction for 0x7506…b76a and 0xA980…a846 on Etherscan

What we did next

With both emergency proposals executed, the attacker could no longer claim funds or submit new fraudulent proofs. From there we focused on three things, and all three are done.

First, the impact. We committed to making users whole and refilling the bridge 1:1, and we did. The bridge was recollateralized in kind before reopening, entirely from Foundation and Taiko Labs operating cash. No locked or unvested tokens were touched and no vesting schedule changed. Every L2 balance has been fully backed from the moment the network resumed.

Second, fixing the bug, hardening the protocol and adding emergency response mechanisms. These changes were reviewed by OpenZeppelin and independent Security Council members and executed on June 29 via Proposal #34. OpenZeppelin's incident response review found no critical, high or medium severity issues. Alongside the on-chain fixes we hardened our infrastructure, improving our SecOps monitoring, off-chain components and emergency procedures.

We are also working on:

• Streamlining our emergency-response and Security Council signing process, so we can act faster under pressure.

• Keeping our SGX attestation fresh: additional defense-in-depth. We will migrate to the upstream Automata DCAP Attestation stack with on-chain PCCS and put TCB (Trusted Computing Base) and certificate-revocation (CRL) updates on a regular maintenance schedule, so our attestation stays current with Intel's latest hardware-security baselines without relying on manual upkeep. The aforementioned debug-mode rejection already closes the path used in this incident; this work simply keeps the attestation layer current over time.

• Making a ZK proof mandatory on every block through the Unzen hard fork. Finalization continues to require multiple proofs, but at least one must always be ZK, so SGX/TEE no longer provides an independent finality path and no single proof system can finalize the chain on its own. To keep every block provable, Unzen introduces zk gas, a metering mechanism analogous to execution gas that quantifies the proving cycles of each opcode, and we run two independent zkVMs (SP1 and RISC Zero) as protection against completeness bugs in either one. Unzen also upgrades Taiko EVM to Prague and re-enables forced inclusion, which was disabled as part of the incident response. The fork was proposed to the DAO on July 7 as Proposal #36, approved by the Security Council on July 14, and is in the community veto period until July 24. Mainnet activation is scheduled for August 6.

Third, reopening safely. Every change went through governance and the Security Council, and we brought the chain back in four reviewed stages. We deployed the remediation contracts and verified the finalized state was restored with no forged checkpoints or retriable messages reachable, replenished the bridge to back every L2 asset 1:1, resumed proposing, and unpaused the bridge on July 2. The quotas in place are deliberately conservative while we build confidence in the reopened chain, tighter than before the incident, and we raise them as utilization data comes in.

We reported the incident to the Singapore Police Force (Report No. A202606247010) on June 23 and provided the report to MEXC, where the 1.99 million TAIKO the attacker deposited is frozen. Converting that freeze into a return is a law enforcement led process and we are pursuing it actively. Of the stolen ETH, 17 ETH has been returned to the treasury. Approximately 530 ETH was moved through Tornado Cash and approximately 366 ETH remains in the two known attacker wallets, which we monitor together with a specialized traceability firm. None of this affects users. The shortfall was covered in full by the Foundation, recovery proceeds offset that cost and were never a precondition for making users whole.

Our operations team is available to exchanges, infrastructure providers, and ecosystem partners throughout this process, and security researchers can reach us at security@taiko.xyz.

What this changes for builders on Taiko

If you were budgeting a fixed amount per proof yesterday, that line drops by up to half today.Boundless ran Surge against the prior version on Base mainnet over multiple days on identical hardware. Reliability held up across that run with zero proving failures logged, so the improved economics arrive without a tradeoff on service quality

Surge brings native multi-chain prover support to Taiko. Native multi-chain prover support brings native support to Taiko. Every prover already on Base is one config flip away from serving Taiko Proof Requests, which means the prover liquidity that accumulated around Base over the past year is now available to Taiko workloads without anyone spinning up new infrastructure.

What more cost-effective proofs unlock

Lower cost proofs change which products can actually ship, and a few categories become worth a fresh look:

• Verifiable AI agents that need to prove what they did on-chain without proof costs eating the margin

• High-frequency proof use cases like defi,oracle attestations and cross-chain messaging

Taiko is leaning hard into the AI Agent category, because cheap, fast and multi-chain proving is the piece these agents needed to act verifiably across environments without burning their margin on infrastructure.

A year ago this was the bottleneck for the whole agent category, because the per-proof economics didn't pencil out when an agent's work required continuous on-chain attestation, so most teams either skipped the proof step entirely or settled for selective verification of high-value actions. Surge moves the cost floor far enough that proving every agent action becomes economically rational, and the multi-chain configuration means an agent operating across Taiko and Base no longer needs separate proving infrastructure for each chain.

None of this is limited to teams building on Taiko. Anyone can request a proof through Boundless and use it wherever they need to, so an app on another chain that needs ZK proofs can request them and settle on Taiko without proving Taiko blocks at all. The proving runs on the same shared Boundless network whichever chain you target, so Taiko is one of the destinations you can route those proofs to, and the one we use to prove our own blocks.

Taiko has been routing proof workloads through Boundless since late 2025 as part of the SP1-plus-Boundless multi-prover setup that delivered 100% ZK coverage on every Taiko mainnet block, and Surge upgrades that integration onto the shared multi-chain prover network. The full technical breakdown sits in the Proving Node 2.0 release notes.

About Taiko

Taiko is an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain protocol and ecosystem. As Ethereum's first based rollup and a Type 1 zk-EVM, Taiko provides Ethereum-equivalent execution for developers, protocols and applications. With autonomous agents now moving on-chain, Taiko is building the execution layer for agent-driven activity, supporting use cases across AI agents, real-world assets, DeFi and on-chain markets. For more information visit http://taiko.xyz.

About Boundless

Boundless is making blockchains internet-scale with ZK. For more information visit https://boundless.network.

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Real-world asset tokenization is the process of representing assets like bonds, real estate or private equity as tokens on a blockchain. It is finally moving from pilots to production. Getting an asset on chain was never the bottleneck. The industry solved that long ago. The hard part is everything that comes after issuance: keeping an asset compliant, tracking who owns it and enforcing how it can move, for as long as it exists. That post-issuance layer is what Brickken built, and it now runs natively on Taiko, so builders on the network get the full asset lifecycle out of the box, from a ready-made WebApp to a Whitelabel product to a direct API.

Why the underlying blockchain matters for tokenized assets

Tokenized assets are only as reliable as the chain beneath them. Taiko is Ethereum's first based rollup and a Type 1 zk-EVM, which means it runs the exact same execution as Ethereum, secured by zero-knowledge proofs, at a fraction of the transaction cost. Issuers build with the Ethereum contracts and tools they already use, with nothing to migrate and no new standards to learn. Because those properties hold up under sustained automated load, Taiko handles far more than a one-off issuance. It is built for the constant, high-frequency activity that tokenized assets, and the agents operating them, will generate.

How AI agents operate tokenized assets on Taiko

The deployment brings Brickken's full agent-ready stack to Taiko, including RAMS (Regulated Agent Mandate Standard), the compliance delegation standard that defines what an AI agent is authorized to do, on whose behalf, under what conditions, and within which transfer constraints, enforced directly at the protocol level.

Each agent carries an attested identity, and every transfer it initiates passes through RAMS-defined rules before execution. An asset can move through a fully automated workflow without ever leaving the compliance and ownership controls an institution depends on. Real-world assets and AI agents are converging fast, and this is the infrastructure that lets them run on the same rails.

"The tokenization conversation has been stuck on one number for years: how much you can put on chain. The number that actually matters now is how much of it can be operated without a human in the loop. That's what we're building for," said Joaquin Mendes, COO at Taiko.

“Tokenized real-world assets and autonomous agents are converging faster than most infrastructure was built to handle. The combination of Brickken's tokenization stack and RAMS, our compliance delegation standard for AI agents operating on regulated on-chain assets with Taiko’s Ethereum-equivalent execution environment gives issuers a path to deploy tokenized assets in a context where agentic workflows are a first-class consideration, not an afterthought,” said Ludovico Rossi, CRO of Brickken.

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Here's the longer version. What we shipped, what's working, what's harder than we thought and what we're betting on for the rest of the year.

The agents are real, and they're showing up

A year ago, "AI Agents will transact onchain at scale" was a thesis we had to defend. In the last few months, the data started defending it for us.

ERC-8004 is live on Taiko The open standard for AI Agent identity, reputation and validation, onchain, working in production. We didn't just adopt the spec. Taiko is one of the first places it actually runs.

Joaquin wrote the definition of AI Agents into the CoinMarketCap glossary. Yes, that one. The next time someone asks the internet what an AI Agent is, the answer starts with us. Mom, we made it.

growthepie flagged it in the data. Their EIP-8004 quick bite called out that AI registrations are picking up on Taiko. Not a forecast. Observed behaviour.

Artemis put us on the Agentic Commerce Market Map alongside 165 companies across 17 chains. Showing up on the maps that matter is a leading indicator, especially when the people drawing the map aren't on your payroll.

Four signals in four months, each one stacking on the last.

Every person on the team shipped an Agent

If you want a chain that AI Agents will actually use, the fastest way is to spend a few hours a week being the AI Agent. So we've been running weekly hackathons since early in the year. Every team member, from marketing through engineering, has shipped at least one AI Agent project.

The output is wide and weird in the right way:

• Tax calculators

• Agent dating sites

• Oracles

• A crypto media communications agent

Some are silly. Some are serious. All are functional. The individual products aren't the point. The point is that every person on the team has now built one, hit the walls in the infrastructure and brought back what we needed to fix or build to make the next one easier. We are using what we make.

Writing for the audience that actually showed up

Your next 1000 "developers" aren't developers. They're agents, and agents don't google, they query. So we rebuilt the content stack around how machines read, not how humans browse.

docs.taiko.xyz, rebuilt for agents. Every page now serves clean Markdown with one click. Your AI just got read access to our entire knowledge base. Do with that what you will.

Three AI Agent guides are live on the site, each available in Markdown so search engines and language models can ingest the source material directly, which is what AEO actually looks like in production:

• What is Taiko Alethia?

• How to Deploy AI Agents on Taiko

• ERC-8004: The Trustless Agent Standard on Taiko

A fourth guide, Why AI Agents need based rollups, is coming next.

Proving Ground is live. Our new publication at provinggroundxyz is where we document, in public, what we're building, testing and learning as we figure out how AI Agents actually work on blockchain infrastructure, with two posts a week landing every Tuesday and Thursday across three rotating formats. Experiments give first-person accounts from people building on Taiko, walking through the technical wall they hit, the design decision they made and the reasoning behind it. Analysis pieces zoom out to the bigger questions that surface when autonomous systems meet onchain infrastructure, while explainers break down specific concepts at the intersection of AI Agents and crypto, written to age well as reference long after the news cycle has moved on.

The name is deliberate, because a proving ground is rougher than a lab and closer to the field, where ideas, hypotheses and experiments get put through their paces, and if something works we say so, and if it doesn't we say that too. Taiko itself is a proving ground for AI Agents, and the publication is the record of what we find.

Under the hood

Shasta is running. Our next major protocol evolution went from roadmap to live in the same window we introduced it.

TaikoProofs went live at proofs.taiko.xyz. A real-time dashboard tracking ZK coverage, proof latency and batch finalization across every batch the chain produces. Inspired by Ethproofs. We target 100 percent ZK coverage and want to enforce it at the protocol level, and the dashboard shows the complete picture, including operational variation. Verification, not claims.

Sub-cent gas. Base fee dropped to 0.01 gwei. The average Taiko transaction now costs around $0.003. Cheaper than most L2s, in the same ballpark as ultra-low-fee chains like Solana and Polygon. Sub-cent gas gang.

Out in the world

Taiko × Interfold brought confidential coordination to the ecosystem. Onchain systems break when votes, bids or strategies leak before execution. The partnership opens a new pattern: private inputs, verifiable outcomes, no trusted operator in the middle.

Joaquin published an OpEd in Cointelegraph: Real-world assets don't need new gatekeepers. The argument is that tokenization done right doesn't need a permission layer dressed up as innovation, which lands differently when you remember that the next wave of holders for these assets won't be humans queueing at a KYC desk. It's the kind of position we're putting more weight behind, especially as AI Agents move closer to interacting with RWAs at scale.

Behind the scenes: governance is real

On April 17 we held our third board meeting. We mention it not because board meetings are interesting, but because functioning governance is the kind of thing nobody notices until it isn't there.

The board reviewed administrative and legal matters, walked through the quarterly spending report and discussed Taiko's strategic direction. On the financial side, we're tracking against the spending plan approved in mid-2025, which is the kind of boring news that actually matters. On the strategic side, the board did what a good governance body should, bringing an external perspective and asking the questions that only surface when sharp people think hard about a protocol's direction.

The board: Prof. Felix, Prof. Wen Yonggang, Joy Lam (Clarient Advisory, Ex-Binance Head of Global Regulatory and APAC Legal), Terence Lam (representing Taiko Labs Limited) andDaniel Wang (Taiko DAOFoundation Supervisor). 

The big internal news this year is that Gustavo Gonzalez is now CTO, with the title finally catching up to the work. He's been driving Shasta, TaikoProofs and the sub-cent gas drop, and he's now spearheading DeFi-Cli and Trusted Layers for AI Agents. The technical direction across Taiko sits with him from here.

For the full backstory on how the board came together, see Taiko DAO Appoints Three Heavyweight Board Directors and Advisor as Governance Goes Live from October.

Four down, eight to go

The thesis is showing up in the data. The protocol keeps getting faster, cheaper and more legible to the audience we're building for. The publication is live. The board is engaged. The numbers are moving.

Heads down.

Taiko team

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This partnership closes that gap by pairing Taiko's Ethereum-equivalent execution with The Interfold's confidential coordination layer, which lets applications take private inputs from users and agents while still settling verifiable outcomes onchain without handing execution authority to a single operator.

Initial use cases

The first is agentic proxies for Taiko’s Aragon DAO instance. These are programmable agents that can act on behalf of participants without forcing users to expose the strategy or decision logic behind each action. Instead of manually interacting with governance or coordination processes, users can delegate actions to agents that operate privately while still producing verifiable outcomes on Taiko. 

The second is secret ballots, also via Taiko’s Aragon DAO. Today, most onchain voting is fully public, which can introduce social pressure, bribery and strategic behavior. With The Interfold, votes get submitted privately and tallied in a way that preserves both confidentiality and correctness. The final result is verifiable onchain, but individual votes remain hidden. This enables governance that is both verifiable and genuinely private.

The third is sealed-bid auctions on Taiko Swap. In traditional onchain trading, intent is visible before execution, which is exactly what MEV and front-running feed on. Sealed-bid auctions flip that dynamic by allowing users to submit bids privately. Prices are determined without exposing individual bids upfront, and the final outcome is still settled transparently onchain. This leads to fairer execution and more efficient price discovery.

What this unlocks

For the Taiko ecosystem, this opens up a broader design space for coordination onchain. DAOs can move beyond fully transparent governance. DeFi protocols can build market mechanisms that collapse when all intent is visible before execution. Builders can design applications that rely on shared outcomes without forcing users to reveal everything upfront.

Instead of treating transparency as the default for every layer of coordination, developers on Taiko get to be more precise about what needs to be public and what should stay confidential.

Where The Interfold fits

The Interfold provides the confidential coordination layer that sits alongside Taiko’s execution environment. While Taiko ensures that outcomes are verified and settled onchain, The Interfold enables confidential execution so sensitive inputs remain protected throughout the entire coordination process while results can still be verified onchain.

Rather than replacing transparency, The Interfold refines it, separating what needs to be public (results, correctness, settlement) from what should remain confidential (intent, input, strategy).

This is the starting point. As we continue working together, we expect to expand these primitives across more applications in the Taiko ecosystem and explore new forms of private, verifiable coordination.

Explore Taiko at https://taiko.xyz/ and learn more about The Interfold athttps://theinterfold.com/.

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Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Proving Ground: https://provinggroundxyz.substack.com

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

Taiko's upcoming upgrade, Shasta, is a complete redesign of the core protocol with two objectives:

1. Simplicity

2. Efficiency

After this upgrade, Taiko (and based rollups by design) will be simpler and cheaper than most alternative rollup models. Preliminary benchmarks have shown more than a 20x reduction in gas fees when proposing and an 8x reduction in proving compared to the previous version (Pacaya).

Shasta is also 5x-15x more efficient for proposers than other popular zk rollups.

This upgrade advances Taiko toward Stage 1 and establishes the foundation for permissionless preconfirmations.

The state of based rollups

Based rollups were proposed with one main purpose in mind: to scale Ethereum while staying true to its values. This means not only inheriting the L1 security, but also its other properties: liveness, censorship resistance, decentralization and credible neutrality. At Taiko, we've adhered to this ethos from the beginning, even when taking shortcuts would have been easier.

The excitement around based sequencing, built at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025, has vanished, leaving two common criticisms: 

1. Speed: Without preconfirmations, waiting for (at least) an entire L1 slot is too slow for most use cases and user expectations.
   Preconfirmations have already proved to solve this issue. What remains is fully decentralizing them, onboarding L1 validators and reducing block times. But after EIP-7917 went live in Fusaka, this is an implementation problem and a matter of months.

2. Economic feasibility (i.e., they are too expensive): Preconfirmations partially solved the cost issue by reducing the frequency at which proposers need to post to the L1, but the changes introduced in Shasta are the real game-changer. With this new protocol design, based rollups can be cheaper than most zk rollups, and once sharing is achieved, they can be significantly cheaper than most other L2s (under similar levels of activity).

This is why we are excited about the upcoming Shasta upgrade, and we expect it to be one of the turning points that moves our industry from the place it is today, where Taiko is still the only based rollup in production, to a world where abundant adoption comes in, and tens of rollups join the ecosystem.

Shasta upgrade

Shasta is a complete redesign of Taiko's protocol, designed from first principles and informed by the experience of running a rollup in production, as well as our collaboration on the minimal-rollup. We've designed Shasta with three principles in mind:

1. Simplicity: simple protocols are key to innovation. When something is simple to understand, it is also simpler to extend and audit. Shasta removes most of the complexity found in earlier protocol design.

2. Efficiency: Ethereum-grade security and properties do not have to come at a higher cost for users. As it turns out, simplifying the protocol also significantly reduces costs. Shasta achieves a 20x reduction in proposing costs and a 5x reduction in proving and finalization costs.

3. Move complexity off-chain: Advances in zk proving have made proving costs and latency drop dramatically. This has allowed us to move a lot of the protocol checks and complexity to derivation and proving.

How does Shasta work?

The protocol is designed around three main contracts, but we've removed all wrappers, unnecessary abstractions and more:

• Inbox: The inbox is the main rollup contract, representing and enforcing the rollup rules on L1 with two main functions:

  • Propose: Accepts blobs, processes forced inclusions (if they’re due), updates the CoreState and emits an event for provers. That's it, no complex accounting or on-chain checks for protocol-wide rules (e.g. gas limits, timestamps, etc.). All that is derived off-chain and enforced by the prover.
    

  • Prove: Process bonds (if the proof is late), calls the zk verifier, and finalizes the chain by syncing the state of L1 to enable withdrawals and L2->L1 messages. The move to sequential proofs was a key change that unlocked significant simplification and efficiency. This means that proposals are proven (and thus finalized) in order.
    
    This removes the need to have on-chain proof conflict detection and to have a different mechanism to aggregate proofs and finalize the chain.
    

• Anchor: It runs as the first transaction of every L2 block, and its main purpose is to inject the state of the L1 into the L2. This allows deposits and L1->L2 messages, and it will also serve as a commitment store for preconfirmation slashing.
  
  We've removed most other complexities and responsibilities from the anchor.
  

• SignalService: the core mechanism for exchanging messages and bringing tokens between the L1 and Taiko. We've simplified by removing complex structures such as HopProofs, while still keeping it backwards compatible (meaning bridges and intent providers don't need to upgrade).

Words are nice, show me the benches

All of the above sounds great, but what are the actual results?

• Proposing new blocks: Before Shasta, proposing new blocks on Taiko could cost up to 1M gas, and the cost scales with the amount of L2 blocks in that batch (because we were posting metadata about each). This increases the cost of proposer operations, which in turn results in higher fees for users.  Shasta reducesproposals cost ~ 45k gas (once the initial warm-up period has passed, and the proposal ring buffer is full). This means a 22x reduction in proposing fees on mainnet.
  

• Proving new batches: Before Shasta, proving a batch cost ~ 500k gas. With zk proof verification accounting for roughly 250,000 gas, execution alone consumed the remaining 250,000. 

Under Shasta, execution costs drop to around 30,000 gas and remain nearly constant regardless of how many batches are being proven. This strongly favors aggregation, allowing more batches to be verified for roughly the same cost.

This is an 8x reduction in gas costs.

But how do these numbers compare to other rollups?

Each rollup has a slightly different way to run validations, proof systems, and L1 to L2 messaging, which makes direct comparisons difficult. But a good starting point is looking at other zk rollups, which all share a similar flow. Data is posted to L1 (a.k.a propose), you prove the transition (a.k.a prove), and then finalize the chain, posting a checkpoint from L2 to L1, against which messages can be verified. This is the result of querying the 7-day average in Dune and projecting the costs after Shasta.

Simplicity is king

We've removed a lot of code. And when we say a lot, we mean A LOT.

Removing code sounds easy; you just delete it, right? But true simplicity is not easy. We think people will find the Shasta codebase the simplest rollup contract to read, audit and understand. And that's very powerful.

We're proud to say that Taiko is now one of the easiest rollup protocols to understand, even if you're just getting started.

Going Live

Security has always been Taiko’s top priority. Shasta has been in development for several months, with careful review and testing of every part of the code. The protocol is already running on internal devnets, where preconfers are testing their software to ensure everything works as expected.

Hoodi will be updated in the coming weeks, giving users early access to the latest improvements. Following final testing on Hoodi, the team plans to submit Shasta as a proposal to the Taiko DAO. Activation on mainnet will depend on successful verification and community approval.

Join us 💗

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Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Season 6 featured two tracks: The Arena and The Undercity. Trailblazers competed across both, and now it’s time to reap the rewards.  Claims are officially open.

https://trailblazers.taiko.xyz/claim

The Process

This season followed our established framework. We completed Sybil checks and internal reviews to finalize the rankings. Trailblazers also had the opportunity to distinguish themselves through the Trailblazer role on Guild.

However, because Guild significantly changed how its system works this season, we decided that even those who earned only the social component of the Guild role would still receive 75% of the rewards.

As previously communicated, Undercity participants were not subject to these checks, and rewards were distributed accordingly.

To refresh your memory on this season’s reward structure, you can revisit our earlier blog post:
https://paragraph.com/@taiko-labs/trailblazers-evolves-the-arena-and-the-undercity-await

Moving Forward

Season 6 marks the final incentivized Trailblazers season  but that does not mean rewards are going away. On the contrary, we’re shifting toward new, more creative ways to reward and engage our community.

Whether you’re into NFTs, trading, gaming, or off-chain participation, exciting new initiatives will be launching soon, so stay tuned.

Thank You

We want to give a huge thank-you to every Trailblazer who stayed with us through 18 months of grinding. Together, we reached incredible heights and distributed nearly 40 million TAIKO tokens along the way. We believe that a committed, participatory community deserves meaningful rewards  and we did our best to live up to that.

Now, an even more exciting and dynamic chapter for our community begins.

Stay with us. Stay based. 🥁



Join us💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Q4 marked a shift for Taiko. After proving that based rollups work in production, we spent this quarter consolidating our technical achievements, deepening strategic partnerships, and positioning for sustainable growth.

Here's what defined the quarter:

• 100% ZK Coverage Achieved: Every block proven with zero-knowledge proofs

• ENS Chose Taiko Stack for Namechain: Ethereum's naming infrastructure launching as a based rollup

• Chainlink ACE Integration: Institutional compliance infrastructure partnership

• Avalon Labs Partnership: RWA and stablecoin infrastructure deployment

• TaikoSwap Launches: Native DeFi infrastructure

Protocol & Technical Milestones

100% ZK Coverage

On December 4, Taiko achieved 100% zero-knowledge proof coverage. Every single block on mainnet is now cryptographically verified through our multi-prover system using SP1 (Succinct) and Boundless (RISC Zero). This marks a clear step toward Stage 2 rollup maturity.

Read more: Taiko Achieves 100% ZK Coverage

Updated Alethia Whitepaper

We released the updated Taiko Alethia Whitepaper, providing a comprehensive technical blueprint of our based rollup architecture. The document details Ontake, Pacaya, and the upcoming Shasta upgrade, explaining how we achieve sub-second preconfirmations and multiprover verification without centralized sequencing.

Read more: The Updated Taiko Alethia Whitepaper

ULTRA TX & Gwyneth

Our work on Gwyneth advanced with the publication of a detailed technical writeup on ULTRA TX. This design enables atomic cross-chain transactions between L1 and multiple L2s without bridges or asynchronous message passing. Testnet deployment planned for 2026.

Read more: ULTRA TX & Gwyneth

Major Partnerships

ENS Chooses Taiko Stack for Namechain

ENS, Ethereum's most widely used naming protocol, selected Taiko's technology as the foundation for Namechain. Built through Nethermind's Surge framework, Namechain will launch as a fully based rollup, skipping progressive decentralization entirely.

When Ethereum's most critical infrastructure chooses your architecture, it's proof that the based thesis is production-ready.

Read more: Taiko Stack Selected by ENS for Namechain

Chainlink ACE Integration

Taiko integrated with Chainlink's Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), joining Ethereum and Linea as one of three blockchain partners in the launch ecosystem. This brings modular compliance infrastructure to Taiko, enabling institutional-grade tokenization while preserving the credible neutrality of based sequencing.

Read more: Taiko Integrates Chainlink ACE

Avalon Labs Partnership

Avalon Labs, the leading Bitcoin-focused capital markets platform, is deploying its complete stablecoin and Real-World Asset infrastructure on Taiko. This brings sustainable liquidity, institutional-grade yield products, and compliance-ready operations to the network.

Avalon chose Taiko for its Ethereum-native security, sub-2-second preconfirmations, and fully decentralized sequencing.

Read more: Taiko × Avalon Labs Partnership

Ecosystem Growth

TaikoSwap launched as Taiko's native decentralized exchange, built on Uniswap architecture with ETH/USDC, TAIKO/USDC, and TAIKO/ETH trading pairs.

Read more

Trailblazers Season 6 wrapped up in early December, continuing to engage thousands of users through The Arena and The Undercity dual-track system.

DevCon Argentina saw Taiko connecting with developers and ecosystem builders on Ethereum's scaling roadmap.

What's Next

Shasta Hardfork Our next mainnet upgrade will enforce 100% ZK requirements for all proposers, activate permissionless preconfirmations, and deliver significant cost reductions through protocol optimizations.

Gwyneth Testnet Following the ULTRA TX technical specification, we're preparing Gwyneth's public testnet launch. Developers will be able to test synchronous composability and atomic cross-chain transactions.

Strategic Growth: Beyond technical milestones, we're refining our approach to ecosystem development, developer onboarding, and market positioning. The infrastructure works. Now we're focused on sustainable growth.

Closing Thoughts

Q4 was about consolidation. We proved the technology works at scale, secured validation from institutions like ENS and Chainlink, and established foundational infrastructure.

2025 was the year we proved based rollups aren't just possible. They're production-ready. 2026 will be about demonstrating why they matter.

The future is based.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Sub-2-second preconfirmations on a fully decentralized, based rollup. No trusted operators. No centralized sequencing. Just Ethereum validators doing what they do best.

The journey:

• Q1: Pacaya upgrade deployed on Hekla testnet, laying the foundation for preconfirmations

• Q1: Partnered with OpenZeppelin to develop next-generation based rollup architecture with Proposer-Prover Separation (PPS)

• Q2: Pacaya hardfork went live on Alethia mainnet, introducing batch-based proofs and multiproving

• Q2: Preconfirmations launched on Hekla testnet, achieving ~2-second finality

• Q2: Strategic partnerships with Fabric, Commit-Boost, and Nethermind to develop validator tooling and preconfirmation standards

• Q3: Preconfirmations activated on mainnet, slashing confirmation times from ~45 seconds to ~2 seconds

• Q3: Phase 1 whitelisted partners validated stability across real production workloads

• Q3: Hoodi testnet launched with full preconfirmation support, replacing Hekla

Users experienced 20-30× faster confirmation times. The future doesn't choose between speed and decentralization. It has both.

Read more:

• Q1 2025 Community Update

• Q2 2025 Community Update

• Q3 2025 Community Update

We proved security can be immediate, not eventual

100% ZK coverage achieved in December 2025. Every single block on Taiko mainnet is now proven with zero-knowledge proofs via SP1 and Boundless. Not someday. Today.

The journey:

• Q1: Started at 5% ZK coverage in February

• Q1: Gradually increased to over 30% by end of March

• Q1: Achieved 100% ZK coverage for Taiko-proposed blocks

• Q2: Maintained 100% ZK for Taiko-proposed blocks while community provers handled growing share

• Q2: Processed over 847 million cumulative transactions by end of Q2

• Q3: Community provers continued scaling network proof generation

• Q4: Achieved 100% ZK coverage for ALL blocks on mainnet (December 4)

• Multi-prover system (SP1 + Boundless) ensures redundancy and reliability

Stage 2 rollup maturity in sight, not theory. Decentralization roadmaps are easy. Actual decentralization is rare. We chose the harder path.

Read more: Taiko Achieves 100% ZK Coverage

We proved institutions care about decentralization

When it matters most, the best teams choose based rollups.

The partnerships:

• Q1: OpenZeppelin collaboration on minimal, modular based rollup protocol with improved governance, neutral sequencing, and optimized fee mechanisms

• Q2: Fabric & Commit-Boost partnership to develop validator tooling and preconfirmation standards for the entire based rollup ecosystem

• Q2: Nethermind strategic partnership to enhance protocol performance, sequencing, and execution layers

• Q3: Chainlink Data Streams integration established Chainlink as official oracle infrastructure, providing sub-second market data for Taiko dApps

• Q3: Real-time data integration with Dune Analytics, giving the community access to on-chain insights through customizable dashboards

• Q4: ENS chose Taiko's stack for Namechain - Ethereum's most critical naming infrastructure launching as a based rollup via Nethermind's Surge

• Q4: Chainlink ACE integration - Taiko joined Ethereum and Linea as one of three launch partners for institutional compliance infrastructure

• Q4: Updated Alethia Whitepaper - Technical blueprint showing production-ready based rollup architecture with Ontake, Pacaya, and Shasta specifications

The infrastructure that will last decades can't depend on trusting a single operator. ENS understood this. Others will follow.

Read more:

• Taiko Stack Selected by ENS for Namechain

• Chainlink ACE Integration

• The Updated Taiko Alethia Whitepaper

We proved community can govern

Real power, real accountability, real decentralization.

The journey:

• Q1: Taiko DAO launched on Hekla testnet in January, designed with Aragon featuring multi-threshold multisig, optimistic governance, and community veto power

• Q1: Security Council announced in April with eight distinguished members from research organizations, security firms, and public goods initiatives

• Q2: DAO soft launch on May 1 with Security Council operational and proposal infrastructure in place

• Q3: Binding on-chain governance activated on mainnet in October - token holders can now veto protocol upgrades

• Q3: Security Council appointed heavyweight Board Directors:

  • Joy Lam (former Head of Global Regulatory at Binance)

  • Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Harvard Business School)

  • Professor Wen Yonggang (IEEE Fellow, NTU Singapore)

  • Advisor: CPA Ren Jang (Head of Strategy at Flipster)

Not governance in name only. The community has actual decision-making power over protocol upgrades and parameters.

Read more: Taiko DAO Appoints Board Directors

We proved synchronous composability is possible

ULTRA TX and Gwyneth enable atomic cross-chain transactions between L1 and multiple L2s. No bridges. No message passing delays. True synchronous composability.

The journey:

• Q1: Taiko mainnet renamed to Taiko Alethia in February, reaffirming commitment to truth and transparency

• Q1: Gwyneth development progressed with successful Uniswap L1-L2 liquidity sharing demos

• Q1: ULTRA TX implementation demonstrated synchronous composability potential

• Q4: Comprehensive technical writeup published November 2025, explaining how Gwyneth achieves synchronous L1-L2 composability

Testnet coming 2026. Ethereum doesn't have to feel like islands. It can feel like one chain.

Read more: ULTRA TX & Gwyneth — Synchronous composability across L1 & L2

We proved our ecosystem thesis

Infrastructure and applications grow together. We're building both.

Community engagement:

• Q1: Taiko Takeoff launched to support projects with marketing, funding, networking, and technical assistance - Avalon Labs featured first with 134% APY TAIKO pool

• Q1: Taiko Status introduced with five levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Based) rewarding token holders with enhanced access and allocation opportunities

• Q1: Trailblazers Season 4 launched with 4.5M TAIKO reward pool, split Liquidity Royale tracks, and Status integration

• Q1: DoraHacks Grant Factory Hackathon concluded with largest MACI-powered vote, $20K+ in prizes

• Q1: $25M Grant Fund announced for 2025 to support DeFi, AI, RWA, SocialFi, Gaming, and more

• Q1: Based Rollup Summit in San Francisco featuring Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin

• Q2: Trailblazers Season 5 launched with 3M TAIKO rewards including 700K for Liquidity Royale

• Q2: Based Rollup Summit Cannes Edition with 500+ participants including Justin Drake, Tomasz Stańczak, and ecosystem leaders

• Q3: Trailblazers Season 5 concluded with 3M TAIKO distributed

• Q3: Trailblazers Season 6 launched with The Arena and The Undercity dual-track system

• Q3: Moon Party with K11 Art Foundation in Seoul alongside Maserati, Hypebeast, and luxury brands

• Q3: Korea Blockchain Week presence with official Taiko Seoulmates Party

• Q3: TOKEN2049 Singapore - partnered with ForkOff and IoNet to host "AI, DePIN & RWA Builders" forum

• Q3: Monthly Galxe campaigns featuring ecosystem projects like GemsTown, Symbiosis, CoNFT, engaging thousands of new users

Ecosystem growth:

• Q1: TAIKO listed on Revolut, opening access to 45 million users across 50 countries

• Q2: TAIKO listed on Binance Futures with 1.495M TAIKO rewards distribution

• Q4: Avalon Labs partnership - Leading Bitcoin-focused capital markets platform deploying complete RWA and stablecoin infrastructure on Taiko, bringing institutional-grade yield products and sustainable liquidity

• Q4: TaikoSwap - Native DEX launched with battle-tested Uniswap architecture (ETH/USDC, TAIKO/USDC, TAIKO/ETH pairs)

By the numbers:

• 909.3M transactions processed since mainnet launch

• 2.3M active addresses engaging with the network

• $12.6M in rent paid to L1 - real value settled on Ethereum

• Over 1 million combined followers across Discord and X

• Multiple Trailblazers seasons engaging hundreds of thousands of users

Read more:

• Taiko × Avalon Labs Partnership

• TaikoSwap Launch

What 2025 taught us

The most difficult technical problems aren't impossible. They're just hard.

Based rollups work. Decentralized sequencing works. Full ZK coverage works. Sub-second finality works. All without compromise.

We didn't wait for permission. We didn't accept "good enough." We built what Ethereum scaling should be.

From launching our DAO in January to achieving 100% ZK coverage in December, 2025 was about execution. We proved that you can build infrastructure that's fast, secure, and fully decentralized; not eventually, but today.

What we're proving in 2026

• Shasta hardfork: Enhanced ZK requirements, permissionless preconfirmations, protocol optimizations

• Gwyneth testnet and production rollout

• Continued ecosystem growth and strategic partnerships

The future is based. The future is fast. The future is proven.

The future is Taiko.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Broadening Security Beyond the Protocol Layer

As Taiko scales and institutional adoption accelerates, the Council's mandate extends beyond base protocol security. Gattaca, a research-driven crypto technology company focused on building trading and MEV-related infrastructure, brings expertise that positions the Council to address security considerations at every layer, from the base protocol to the economic mechanisms that govern transaction ordering and execution.

The expanded Council maintains its core responsibilities: managing proposal flows, coordinating emergency responses for critical vulnerabilities, and ensuring Taiko's security standards align with Ethereum's infrastructure. With the addition of a ninth member, the approval thresholds adjust to 7 of 9 for emergency proposals and 6 of 9 for standard proposals.

Updated Council Composition

• Aragon

• Chainbound

• Drew Van der Werff

• Gattaca

• Halborn

• L2Beat

• Nethermind

• Taiko Labs Limited

• Toni (Ethereum Foundation)

As Taiko's DAO continues to develop, the Security Council's composition will evolve to meet the protocol's needs. This addition reflects the growing complexity of securing decentralized infrastructure, where transaction ordering, MEV mitigation, and economic security are increasingly critical to institutional deployment.

About Gattaca:
Gattaca is a research-driven crypto technology company based in London. We have deep experience across the transaction supply chain; primarily focused on building trading and MEV related infrastructure and services.

About Taiko:
Taiko, the first based rollup on Ethereum, is designed to address the scalability challenges of the Ethereum network. Using based rollup technology, Taiko significantly reduces transaction costs and enhances security, providing a seamless and efficient user experience without compromising decentralization. Taiko's preconfirmations technology further enhances this experience by delivering near-instant transaction confirmation, eliminating the uncertainty and waiting times that have traditionally made blockchain applications impractical for real-world use cases requiring immediate feedback.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

• Sustainable stablecoin liquidity

• Institutional-grade RWA yield products

• Permissionless, censorship-resistant rails

The Roadmap: Bringing RWA Yields to Taiko

This partnership with Avalon Labs is centered on one core objective: injecting meaningful liquidity into the Taiko ecosystem to power real-world asset acquisition and yield generation. By combining essential technical components, compliance-ready operations, and a real-world yield framework. This work positions Taiko as a credible environment for institutional finance on a decentralized, Ethereum-aligned Layer 2.

1. Technical Infrastructure for Institutional Finance

Taiko is set to become the home for Avalon’s institutional-grade infrastructure, with audited lending contracts, major oracle integrations, omnichain token standards, and native stablecoin minting and bridging all being deployed directly on the network. These components not only power Avalon’s products but also elevate Taiko’s technical foundation for developers building advanced financial applications.

2.Compliance and Institutional Operations Layer

To support regulated institutions, Taiko will integrate Avalon’s compliance-ready operational layer, including onboarding workflows and institutional dashboards. This framework allows traditional financial entities to operate confidently on Taiko while benefiting from the neutrality and permissionless nature of a fully decentralized Layer 2.

3.RWA Yield and On-Chain Capital Flow Architecture

Avalon’s yield and capital-flow design will being executed entirely on Taiko, linking collateral deposits, stablecoin minting, and real-world yield sources. All liquidity and movements are transparently recorded on-chain, with users interacting natively on Taiko and the ecosystem benefiting from sustained, visible economic activity.

Why Avalon Labs Chose to Build on Taiko

In a crowded Layer 2 landscape, Avalon Labs selected Taiko for one core reason: it offers the strongest long-term foundation for institutional-grade tokenized finance. Taiko’s based rollup architecture delivers the decentralization of Ethereum without sacrificing performance, enabling secure, scalable RWA, stablecoin, and on-chain capital market applications while avoiding the centralized risks seen in traditional sequencer models.

Taiko also provides the settlement guarantees institutions need. With ~2-second preconfirmations, transactions receive enterprise-level finality that supports real-time payments, high-volume trading, and large-scale asset operations. This level of predictability is critical for institutions moving meaningful value on-chain.

Ultimately, Taiko’s combination of Ethereum-native security, seamless composability, and a fully decentralized sequencer makes it one of the most trusted environments for tokenizing and trading real-world assets at scale. For builders focused on longevity, regulatory confidence, and transparent on-chain liquidity flows, Taiko stands out as the network purpose-built for institutional adoption.

A New Standard for Institutional Finance

This partnership positions Taiko as a core foundation for institutions moving into on-chain finance. It demonstrates that decentralization, compliance, and high performance can coexist without relying on centralized sequencers.

The combined infrastructure provides a regulation-aware path for tokenizing assets, issuing stablecoins, and enabling instant settlement through Taiko’s preconfirmations. It shows that institutional activity can run securely and transparently on decentralized rails.

As Avalon expands on Taiko, we expect more RWA issuers, payment providers, and stablecoin projects to follow, reinforcing that decentralized infrastructure is ready for institutional-scale adoption.

Taiko is where institutional finance meets fully decentralized infrastructure.

About Avalon Labs:
Avalon Labs is the leading on-chain, Bitcoin-focused capital markets platform and the issuer of USDa, the Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin. To date, Avalon has facilitated more than $3.1 billion in loan volume and serviced over 20,000 BTC, earning the trust of institutions and individual users alike.

The protocol provides a full suite of financial products, including fixed-rate Bitcoin borrowing, institutional-grade yield strategies, decentralized lending, AI-powered RWA yield vaults, and high-yield staking. By bridging traditional finance with decentralized infrastructure, Avalon Labs is building the financial center for Bitcoin, offering secure, scalable, and transparent solutions for the digital asset economy.

About Taiko:
Taiko, the first based rollup on Ethereum, is designed to address the scalability challenges of the Ethereum network. Using based rollup technology, Taiko significantly reduces transaction costs and enhances security, providing a seamless and efficient user experience without compromising decentralization. Taiko's preconfirmations technology further enhances this experience by delivering near-instant transaction confirmation, eliminating the uncertainty and waiting times that have traditionally made blockchain applications impractical for real-world use cases requiring immediate feedback.

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• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

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In Season 6, we introduced The Arena and The Undercity as two new paths for Trailblazers. Season 6 will officially end on December 15, 2025 and with it, the Trailblazers program incentives will stop. Before that though, let’s wrap up Season 6 and explain how rewards will work.

Season 6 Rewards and the Trailblazer Role

As many of you know, we have been using Guild to verify the Trailblazer role through Human (FKA Gitcoin) Passport scores. However, Guild no longer supports Gitcoin and has introduced a different passport system. Since we don’t want to make our Trailblazers deal with a new passport, we’re changing how the Trailblazer role works by splitting it into two requirements:

Here’s what you must do:

• Get your Trailblazer role on Guild by completing two simple social tasks. https://guild.xyz/taiko/home

• Keep your Human Passport Score (FKA Gitcoin Score) score above 17.
  https://app.passport.xyz/#/

You will not verify your Human Passport on Guild, we will handle verification on the backend. However, your Guild connected wallet must have a Passport score of 17 or higher. This change also closes a loophole where some users linked multiple wallets through a single Guild identity.

Important: Make sure the wallet you’ve used for Trailblazers is your primary wallet on Guild, and is also the wallet that has 17 or higher Passport score. 

You have until December 20, 2025 to secure your Trailblazer role and Human Passport score. 

Reward breakdown for The Arena:

• No Trailblazer role + No Passport score → 50% of rewards

• Trailblazer role + No Passport score → 75% of rewards

• Trailblazer role + Passport score ≥ 17 → 100% of rewards

These rules apply only to The Arena. The Undercity remains unrestricted.

What is Changing? 

We are simply transitioning away from fixed rewards and pausing the prize pool for now. The core experience remains and we will continue running Trailblazers as we explore new formats, events and opportunities.

Trailblazers has been a daily ritual for many of you, and we’re grateful for the incredible dedication shown over the past 18+ months. We’ve distributed more than 30 million TAIKO tokens, created unforgettable moments and built one of the most active programs in blockchain ecosystem.

Through thick and thin, you showed up, competed, contributed, and shaped this journey with us. We hope Trailblazers gave you not only rewards, but also experiences, friendships, and memories worth keeping. To every Trailblazer who stood the test of time, thank you.

The Arena is Moving Forward

The Arena will stay open and active. Games, tournaments and special events will continue and participating titles may still offer rewards at their discretion. Our goal is to keep The Arena growing into a vibrant hub for Web3 gaming, a place where new games launch, players compete and communities form. 

This is not the end, just the beginning of a more flexible and evolving chapter. Whether you are a competitor, a builder or a supporter, we are excited to keep growing with you as Trailblazers continues into its next phase.

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Starting this week, every block on Taiko mainnet is proven with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. Not someday but TODAY!

This achievement marks a step toward Stage 2 rollup maturity, the highest standard of decentralization defined by Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum community. While implemented as a soft requirement today, every mainnet batch is already being proven with ZK in production.

In an industry where "decentralization roadmaps" often replace actual decentralization, Taiko is demonstrating that you can build infrastructure that's secure today, not eventually.

ZK and Taiko: Powered by SP1 & RISC Zero

Our progress is driven by partnerships with two leading zkVM (zero knowledge Virtual Machine) providers: Succinct's SP1 and Boundless, by RISC Zero. Together, they unlock the breakthroughs needed for 100% ZK on Taiko:

• Flexible economics with Succinct, shifting from fixed-rate to usage-based pricing

• 100% ZK on-chain proving for all transactions using both SP1 and RISC Zero

SP1 provides centralized performance with seamless developer experience. Succinct’s managed service delivers 4–28x speedups over previous versions, reducing workloads from hours to minutes. This streamlined integration gives developers enterprise-grade proving without having to manage any infrastructure.

RISC Zero brings scalable decentralized proving. Its marketplace includes thousands of open provers equipped with GPUs, enabling verifiable computation over arbitrary code. This distributed design ensures resilience, cost efficiency, and strong cryptographic guarantees.

By combining a performance-optimized system with a decentralized one, Taiko ensures 24/7 reliability and rapid adoption of ZK innovations. With ZK-proven blocks and Taiko’s based rollup architecture, security becomes compounding and trust-minimized

How ZK Proving Works on Taiko

From Transaction to Proof: The Complete Pipeline

1. Block Execution
Transactions submitted to Taiko are executed and organized into blocks, then grouped into batches for efficient proving.

2. zkVM Processing
Each batch is executed inside zkVM. Think of it as a transparent computer: it processes your transactions while simultaneously generating mathematical proof that every computation was performed correctly according to protocol rules.

The zkVM doesn't just verify, it creates unforgeable cryptographic receipts for every state transition.

3. Multiple Proving Options
Taiko maintains redundancy through multiple proving systems:

• SP1 (Succinct) - primary proving system

• RISC Zero - backup system for resilience

This multi-vendor approach ensures 24/7 reliability while enabling us to quickly adopt improvements from the broader ZK ecosystem.

4. L1 Verification
Generated proofs are submitted to Ethereum L1, where verifier contracts check their validity. The beauty of ZK proofs: generating them takes minutes, but verifying takes milliseconds and saving gas considerably by using proof aggregation . This asymmetry makes ZK proofs perfect for rollup security，expensive to fake, cheap to verify.

Why This Matters: The Path to Stage 2

The Ethereum community defines rollup maturity across three stages: Stage 0 rollups are controlled by a small team, Stage 1 systems introduce partial decentralization with safety guardrails, and Stage 2 represents full trust minimization where the protocol is secured entirely by code. Most rollups remain at Stage 0, and only a few have reached Stage 1. Stage 2 is the real endgame, and achieving it requires full-chain ZK proofs.

Reaching 100% ZK coverage is a long-term commitment. By achieving full ZK coverage now, Taiko ensures its security model will remain robust not only today, but as the ecosystem grows over the coming decade.

The ZK Road Ahead

We're expanding Taiko’s proving ecosystem beyond SP1 and RISC Zero to include others like Brevis, Zisk, and OpenVM, etc. This multi-provider design ensures redundancy, optionality, and fast access to proving innovations as the ZK landscape evolves.

With full-chain ZK already live, we're now optimizing the protocol, client, and node architecture to make proving native at every layer, reducing overhead, improving parallelism, and smoothing proving workflows so the system can scale as zkVM performance increases.

Our long-term direction is to turn ZK into invisible infrastructure: proofs generated continuously at the node layer, verification embedded at the protocol layer, and developers never needing to reason about circuits or proving systems, only that every transaction and state transition is secured by ZK by default.

Conclusion: A New Standard

Achieving 100% ZK coverage isn't just a Taiko milestone; it's a statement about what rollups should be.

In an industry where "decentralization" often means "eventual decentralization" and "trust-minimized" means "trust us for now," Taiko is taking a different approach:

• Secure today, not eventually

• Decentralized in practice, not just theory

• Proven through mathematics, not marketing

The future of Ethereum scaling is zero-knowledge.
And that future is being built on Taiko, one mathematically verified block at a time.

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We are proud to introduce TaikoSwap, a platform built to embody these principles. It is a place designed to evolve alongside our ecosystem.

What Is TaikoSwap?

TaikoSwap is the native decentralized exchange (DEX) of the Taiko network.

As a based rollup, Taiko offers Ethereum-level security and decentralization. Being a Type 1 rollup, Taiko is the rollup most closely aligned with Ethereum both technically and philosophically.

TaikoSwap is built on the open-source Uniswap architecture, one of the most battle-tested DEX and widely used frameworks. By leveraging proven infrastructure, we can deliver a trustworthy trading experience while expanding upon it with Taiko-specific improvements over time.

TaikoSwap reflects this closeness by providing an Ethereum-like experience that is faster and cheaper. If you want to trade and participate in DeFi within an ecosystem that feels just like Ethereum, only better, TaikoSwap is for you.

Experience TaikoSwap, now: https://swap.taiko.xyz/

Trading Pairs at Launch

At launch, TaikoSwap will support trading across three key pairs to ensure a smooth and liquid trading experience:

• ETH / USDC

• TAIKO / USDC

• TAIKO / ETH

TaikoSwap is modular by design, with new features and pairs to be added over time. Join early and be part of its growth.

Looking Ahead

TaikoSwap represents an important step in our decentralized vision. It enhances the user experience within the Taiko ecosystem while expanding DeFi possibilities for everyone.

Security, scalability, and innovation remain at the core of what we build. TaikoSwap is just the beginning.

Be a part of the movement.

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Namechain will deploy as a based rollup using Surge, Nethermind's framework built on Taiko's technology. One of Ethereum's most critical infrastructure protocols is launching with the architecture Taiko pioneered and brought to production.

Why This Matters

When ENS (responsible for human-readable addresses across the entire Ethereum ecosystem) commits to a based architecture from launch, it validates everything Taiko has been building. Based rollups are production-ready, and they're the future of Ethereum-aligned scaling.

Taiko's technology made it possible for ENS to skip progressive decentralization entirely and launch Namechain as a fully based rollup.

Proof, Not Promises

Taiko didn't just theorize about based sequencing. We shipped it. Since mainnet launch in May 2024:

• 50M+ transactions processed with zero downtime

• Sub-second preconfirmations in production, not whitepapers

• Ethereum validators sequencing L2 blocks efficiently and reliably

• Performance without centralization at scale

As ENS Labs wrote in their decision to move Namechain to Surge: "We were presented with the rare opportunity to skip several steps in the 'progressive decentralization' pathway." By realizing they could build based rollups using Surge and launch with maximal decentralization from day one, ENS chose not just infrastructure in production, but the infrastructure aligned with their core mission.

What the Taiko Stack Delivers

Building on Taiko's technology through Nethermind's Surge, Namechain inherits:

Infrastructure

• Ethereum-native sequencing with no centralized operators

• Stage 1 rollup from launch with a credible path to Stage 2

• Battle-tested stack: the same infrastructure running Taiko mainnet

• Open-source and credibly neutral with no corporate capture

The Technical Breakthrough

ENS needs near-instant name resolution across chains with cryptographic security guarantees. Traditional L2s force a choice between decentralization and performance. Based rollups eliminate that tradeoff.

Namechain leverages preconfirmation technology (which Taiko brought to production on mainnet) to deliver state updates in seconds, not hours. This solves a critical CCIP-Read bottleneck that has plagued ENS for years. Combined with TEE-backed proofs and based sequencing, Namechain achieves institutional-grade performance with full decentralization from launch.

Only possible because Taiko shipped preconfirmations first.

What This Opens Up

If ENS (with its stringent reliability requirements and deep Ethereum alignment) can build on this stack, any application can. Namechain sets a new standard for what's possible when you refuse to compromise on decentralization.

This deployment shows based rollups aren't just theoretically superior. They're the practical choice for teams building critical Ethereum infrastructure.

For teams evaluating rollup frameworks, Namechain is the reference implementation. For the ecosystem, it demonstrates that the based rollup thesis isn't aspirational. It's here, and it's working.

What's Next

As Namechain moves through internal testing toward public testnet (Q2 2026) and mainnet launch, it will demonstrate at scale what Taiko has already established: you don't need to centralize to scale Ethereum.

Nethermind provides infrastructure operations and the Surge framework. Taiko provides the based sequencing technology and preconfirmations protocol. ENS brings product vision and naming protocol expertise. This collaboration shows how open-source infrastructure enables mission-critical applications without vendor lock-in.

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Written by Arixon and reviewed by Brecht.

0) TL;DR (mental model)

• One fat L1 transaction (“ULTRA TX”) sits at the top of each L1 block (mostly, not enforced yet). Read more about ULTRA TX here.

• Inside it, a master builder bundles: L1 account‑abstracted txs, multiple L2 blocks, proofs/witnesses, and the outputs of any cross‑chain calls.

• Gwyneth is the execution stack that makes this possible: a modified REVM + block builder based on Reth + proposer + execution extension (ExEx) that can simulate L1 and L2 together and later replay the same effects onchain.

• Result: synchronous composability between L1 and many L2s with atomicity and single‑proof verification, without changing L1 rules.

1) Why this exists (the problem)

Cross‑chain UX today is split across async messages and “hope it lands” flows:

• You can’t easily enforce invariants across transactions.

• L1→L2 calls that need a return value are clunky.

• L2s want to settle together (share blobs, aggregate proofs) every L1 block if possible.

Goal: Make a block feel like a programmable container where L1 and L2 work can run, talk to each other, and then be committed atomically.

2) The moving parts (roles)

• Custom REVM (“Gwyneth REVM”) — runs transactions across many chains in one process; records a detailed journal (reads/writes, call trees, modes).

• ULTRA Block Builder — picks/executes txs across L1+L2, enforces size/fee limits, collects witnesses, and prepares the ULTRA payload.

• Stateless Validator — turns execution traces into compact proofs/witness data so verifiers can re‑execute without full state.

• Block Proposer — packages everything into an EIP‑4844 blob and submits the ULTRA transaction to L1.

• Custom Execution Extension (ExEx) — watches L1, decodes ULTRA payloads, rebuilds L2 blocks via Engine API, updates forkchoice, and handles reorgs.

• SimpleMultiChainDB & Global Nodes Map — lightweight layer that gives the REVM read/write access to state across many chains within the same process.

3) The core idea (how it works, step by step)

3.1 Build time (offchain)

1. Gather inputs. Pending L1 AA txs and many L2 txs sit in a shared pool. (Note: Non AA txs can still be executed after ULTRA TX in the L1 block)

2. Execute locally. The builder runs them through the Gwyneth REVM with a multi‑chain DB.

   • When a contract wants to “call another chain”, it tags the next call using a tiny precompile. REVM then either:

     • Simulates that cross‑chain segment (for build/prove), or

     • Marks it as L1‑Direct work that must actually run on L1 during proposal.

3. Record everything. The REVM keeps a journal: storage diffs, balances, code reads, and a full call tree (including cross‑chain hops). These become your witness.

4. Package. The builder stops once gas/blob/byte caps are met and constructs the ULTRA payload:

   • Per‑L2 transactions/state roots

   • L1 AA tx batch (if any)

   • Extension outputs (return data for off‑L1 functionality) to be provided to a simple onchain ExtensionOracle

   • Proof inputs / sidecars for stateless verification

5. Propose. The proposer sends an EIP‑4844 transaction carrying the ULTRA payload to the L1 rollup contract.

3.2 Inclusion time (onchain)

1. Top of block. Ideally the ULTRA TX is placed first, so the latest L1 state is known to everything inside it. Although this is the preferred functionality, non top of block inclusion is also supported.

2. Replay & verify. The contract:

   • Checks the recorded pre-state (block hash, beacon root, timestamp, prevrandao, parent ULTRA hash) and blob commitments,

   • Verifies proofs (or performs the configured checks) up front,

   • Replays the recorded L1 work in order—prestate assertions, ExtensionOracle.setTap, smart-account calls, and applyStateDelta writes—reverting the whole ULTRA TX on any mismatch.

3.3 Distribution time (to L2s)

1. ExEx picks it up. ExEx watches L1, decodes the ULTRA payload, and for each L2:

   • Rebuilds the L2 block via Engine API using the included data/witnesses,

   • Advances the L2 head and pins finality to the finalized L1 block window,

   • Updates a global map from “which L1 block → which L2 heads”.

Result: every L2 gets a canonical block that is causally tied to that specific L1 block.

4) A concrete example

Scenario: Alice on L2‑A swaps token X for Y on L2‑B, but only if a small L1 rebalance also succeeds.

1. Alice submits one tx to L2‑A.

2. In execution, her contract calls xcalloptions(to=L2‑B) then DEX_B.swap(...).

3. On L2‑B the swap succeeds and returns amountOut.

4. Back on L2‑A, logic says: if amountOut ≥ threshold, perform an L1 direct top‑up (e.g., move ETH in a treasury). It marks that step L1‑Direct.

5. The builder records: (a) L2‑A & L2‑B state diffs, (b) the expected return data for the L1‑Direct call, and ( c) orders the L1 AA call.

6. The ULTRA TX is proposed. Onchain, Gwyneth verifies the pre-state and proof first, primes the ExtensionOracle with the recorded return data, then replays the L1 AA call and diffs exactly as recorded—any mismatch reverts everything.

7. ExEx rebuilds both L2 blocks and finalizes them relative to that L1 block. Alice sees her swap and the L1 top‑up as a single atomic outcome.

5) Developer surface (L2‑A → L2‑B ERC‑20 xTransfer)

Below is a concrete, example that moves an ERC‑20 balance from L2‑A to L2‑B. Users call this on L2‑A; Gwyneth routes the mint on L2‑B during build and enforces it during replay.

// On L2-A, user/script calls:
function moveTokensL2AToL2B(
    XERC20 token,      // deployed on both L2-A and L2-B (same code)
    uint256 chainIdL2B,    // destination chain ID
    address recipientL2B,  // recipient on L2-B
    uint256 amount
) external {
    // Debits sender on L2-A and requests a mint on L2-B.
    // Under the hood, token.on(chainIdL2B)._mint(...) is invoked cross-chain.
    token.xTransfer(chainIdL2B, recipientL2B, amount);
}

What Gwyneth/ULTRA does with this call

• During build, Gwyneth REVM interprets token.on(chainIdL2B) as a cross‑chain frame and simulates _mint(to, amount) on L2‑B. It journals the L2‑A debit and the L2‑B mint diff.

• The builder adds both diffs to the ULTRA payload and records witnesses.

• On replay, the ULTRA contract enforces that the L2‑A debit and the L2‑B mint match the recorded witnesses; if anything differs, the whole ULTRA TX reverts (atomicity).

6) What makes it safe (atomicity & validation)

• One container, one proof: The whole bundle shares inputs, so you can prove/verify once. If any piece disagrees with the recorded witnesses/outputs, everything reverts.

• Top‑of‑block placement: Ensures the builder’s view of “latest L1 state” matches what the block will actually use.

• Reorg handling: If L1 reorgs, ExEx rewinds each L2 to the heads that were tied to the now‑canonical L1 block at that height.

• Stateless replay: Witnesses let independent verifiers reconstruct the execution without full state, making fraud/imprecision detectable.

7) What it doesn’t change

• No L1 hard fork required. ULTRA TX is “just” a big AA transaction with rules enforced by contracts + proofs.

• Builder sophistication increases. To be competitive you need fast execution, witness generation, and (eventually) fast proving.

• Real‑time proving. Full L1↔L2 synchronicity with proofs under 12s is still an active engineering goal; interim designs can use TEEs/AVSs or limit what’s proven per block.

Note: Proving is still under development, SGX and TDX coming soon.

8) Example flows (for the visual learners like myself)

These diagrams showcase multiple different scenarios for synchronus operations across chains, it should help you see how different origin/destination txs travel through the ULTRA TX pipeline.

8.1 L1 → L2 WETH xTransfer

Key takeaways: L1 account-abstraction frames can synchronously lock WETH on L1 while crediting L2-B. The ExtensionOracle feeds the recorded credit receipt so replayed AA logic observes the same xTransfer outcome the builder saw.

8.2 L2 → L1 WETH xTransfer

Key takeaways: L2-origin WETH withdrawals hit the actual L1 vault inside the same ULTRA container. The builder records the release diff, and replay enforces that the live vault movement matches the simulated xTransfer exactly.

8.3 L2 → L2 WETH xTransfer

Key takeaways: Cross-L2 WETH transfers reuse the same builder journal. With no L1Direct frame, the ExtensionOracle stays idle while both L2 ledgers atomically debit/credit once the ULTRA transaction finalizes on L1.

9) Frequently asked

Q: Why must ULTRA be first in the block? A: So all transactions inside can reason about the latest L1 state without awkward workarounds. (If you drop strict synchronicity with L1 you can loosen this.)

Q: Can I still include ordinary L1 transactions? A: Yes—inside the ULTRA container as AA txs, in any order the builder chooses.

Q: How do L1→L2 calls with return values work? A: The builder simulates them, records outputs, and the ExtensionOracle returns those outputs during onchain replay.

Q: What happens on an L1 reorg? A: ExEx rewinds each L2 to the head associated with the new canonical L1 block at the same height.

10) Quick glossary

• ULTRA TX — a single powerful L1 transaction that carries many txs/blocks/proofs.

• Account abstraction (AA) — L1 transactions from smart accounts, enabling flexible packaging and ordering.

• ExtensionOracle — simple contract that returns pre‑recorded outputs for calls not natively available on L1 during replay.

• ExEx — execution extension that reconstructs L2 blocks from an ULTRA payload.

• Journal — the detailed execution trace REVM writes (reads/writes/calls) used for

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The Compliance Bottleneck

Tokenization has clear institutional use cases: real-world assets, securities and regulated financial instruments. The bottleneck isn't technical capability. Blockchains can represent ownership and transfer value. The bottleneck is regulatory infrastructure.

Issuers need to enforce KYC/AML rules, jurisdiction restrictions, investor accreditation requirements, and transaction limits. They need monitoring systems that flag non-compliant activity. They need reporting that satisfies regulators across different jurisdictions.

Most solutions build compliance on top of centralized sequencers. The sequencer controls transaction ordering, which lets it enforce rules. This works for compliance but creates a trust problem. A centralized operator can reorder transactions for profit, censor addresses under regulatory pressure, or fail as a single point of vulnerability.

What ACE Solves

ACE is modular compliance infrastructure that works across blockchains and jurisdictions.

Cross-Chain Identity (CCID) manages verifiable credentials across multiple blockchains. Instead of separate KYC for each chain, CCID stores cryptographic proofs of verified credentials (KYC, AML, accredited investor status) that work anywhere. It integrates with institutional identity standards like GLEIF's vLEIs.

Policy Manager is a programmable rules engine. Issuers define compliance policies in smart contracts: jurisdiction restrictions, volume limits, role-based access control and investor eligibility. Rules execute automatically and anyone can audit them.

Monitoring and Reporting provides real-time alerts for non-compliance and generates reports for regulatory disclosure.

The launch ecosystem includes over 20 partners: identity providers (GLEIF, World), risk scoring platforms (Chainalysis, TRM Labs), monitoring services (Bluprynt, Hacken), and tokenization infrastructure (Apex Group, Chintai). This establishes ACE as the standard for institutional digital assets.

Why Based Rollups Matter

Taiko's architecture solves the centralized sequencer problem. Transaction ordering happens on Ethereum L1, not through a centralized operator. No single entity controls sequencing. No one can reorder transactions for profit. No one can selectively censor addresses.

ACE on Taiko means issuers enforce compliance rules while maintaining Ethereum-equivalent security and credible neutrality. The compliance layer lives in smart contracts. The sequencing layer stays decentralized through Ethereum's proposer mechanism.

This is a structural difference that matters under pressure. When regulators demand censorship, a centralized sequencer must comply or shut down. A based rollup has no central operator to compel. Transaction ordering runs through Ethereum validators, distributed globally and resistant to coercion.

Compliance does not require centralization. ACE proves this by providing complete compliance infrastructure without requiring a trusted intermediary to control transaction flow.

What Builders Can Do

Developers can now use ACE's compliance framework on Taiko without rebuilding infrastructure from scratch. The system provides policy templates, SDKs, and a compliance sandbox for testing.

Use cases include tokenized securities that enforce investor accreditation and jurisdiction restrictions, stablecoins with programmable compliance for different regulatory environments, real-world asset tokens with automated KYC/AML checks, and financial instruments requiring verifiable identity and policy enforcement.

The modular design means deploy only what you need. Identity verification without complex policy enforcement. Monitoring without cross-chain functionality. This reduces complexity and cost while maintaining flexibility.

Taiko's Institutional Stack

ACE integrates with Taiko's broader institutional infrastructure. Chainlink Data Streams provides reliable pricing data. ACE provides compliance frameworks. Based sequencing provides credible neutrality. This is an institutional stack that does not require trusting a single operator.

Institutional adoption requires infrastructure that satisfies regulatory requirements while remaining credibly neutral over long time horizons. Centralized systems cannot provide this. Operator incentives change. Regulatory pressure forces policy changes. Operators fail.

Based rollups with modular compliance infrastructure solve this. The compliance layer satisfies regulatory requirements. The sequencing layer stays neutral because Ethereum's decentralized validator set controls it.

What This Means

ACE launching with Taiko as one of three blockchain partners shows where serious institutional infrastructure is being built. This is operational infrastructure for regulated financial assets, not speculation.

Real institutional adoption comes from solving hard regulatory problems while maintaining the decentralization properties that make blockchain infrastructure valuable. Compliance infrastructure. Verifiable identity systems. Programmable policy enforcement across jurisdictions.

Taiko's integration with ACE demonstrates that compliance and decentralization are complementary, not opposing. Both are required for infrastructure that institutions can actually use.

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• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

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• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

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Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Why based matters

Most rollups today run on centralized sequencers. One company controls transaction ordering. One point of failure. One entity that can censor you, extract MEV, or simply go offline and take the whole network with it.

We didn't want to scale Ethereum by introducing new trust assumptions. So Taiko hands the sequencing back to Ethereum's own validators. Same censorship resistance, same liveness guarantees. If Ethereum is live, Taiko is live. If Ethereum won't censor you, neither will we.

What we built

Sub-second preconfirmations without a centralized operator. Our two-phase system starts with whitelisted operators and evolves to permissionless participation, where any L1 validator can opt in.

Batch-based proving that slashes costs while keeping blocks small and responsive. Multiple blocks are proved together with aggregated proofs.

A multiproving system where every batch gets verified through ZK-SNARKs and SGX. If one proof system breaks, you're still covered.

The whitepaper has the formulas, the protocol specs and the technical architecture. It walks through Ontake, Pacaya, and what's coming with Shasta (10x cost reductions, anyone?).

The point

Based rollups work. They're not theoretical. They're live, handling real transactions, proving that you can scale Ethereum without compromising on decentralization.Read it here.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

The moment you’ve been waiting for has arrived. Eligible participants from Season 5 can now claim their TAIKO tokens directly through their Trailblazers profile. Congratulations to everyone who qualified.

🏆 TAIKO Token Rewards for Trailblazers S5 🏆

Level 14 (Legend): 3,037.50

Level 13 (Densetsu): 1,948.58

Level 12 (Kodai): 1,378.72

Level 11 (Hashira): 749.87

Level 10 (Shogun): 465.72

Level 9 (Taichou II): 241.69

Level 8 (Taichou I): 197.67

Level 7 (Sensei II): 138.11

Level 6 (Sensei I): 69.92

Level 5 (Samurai II): 41.42

Level 4 (Samurai I): 10.93

Level 3 (Senshi II): 3.68

Level 2 (Senshi I): 1.84

Level 1 (Initiate): 1.21

Please claim your rewards by November 22.

Ensuring Fair Play and the Trailblazer Role

As always, we conducted a careful review of participation data to identify and remove bad-faith actors or anyone attempting to exploit the system. Once these accounts were filtered out, levels were recalculated based on the remaining player pool, which may have caused some shifts in rank. We also took community findings very seriously to ensure fair-play. Rest assured, even if your level went down, since the remaining pool of participants became smaller, your rewards actually increased.

This season, we listened closely to community feedback and kept the review process thorough, including during the claims phase. We also kept the Trailblazer role effect intact. At the same time, those who did not receive the role were still rewarded at fifty percent of the standard rate. This season, the vast majority of participants obtained the role, and for that, we would like to thank our community.

Looking Ahead

Trailblazers has continued to grow with the introduction of The Arena and The Undercity, two new ways to engage with the Taiko ecosystem.

The Arena is where you play, earn XP, and collect rewards with every victory. The more you win, the higher you climb, and the greater your final prize at the end of the season.

The Undercity follows a different path. There are no restrictions, only the chance to accumulate XP through transactions and rise in rank. No sybil checks will be performed there, allowing you to farm freely and show your true power.

Trailblazers continues to move forward with strength, and we invite you to stay on this journey with us.

Let’s keep building and advancing together.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.

Hello, from the end of Q3!

It’s been a full-on quarter, with  transformative upgrades, key integrations and community growth for Taiko. Here's what defined the quarter:

• Based Preconfirmations Live on Mainnet – Phase 1 upgrade cut confirmation times to ~2s, making Taiko 20–30× faster.

• Hoodi Testnet Launched – New testnet with preconfirmation support, replacing Hekla.

• Chainlink Oracles Integrated – Chainlink Data Streams now power Taiko dApps with sub-second market data.

• DAO Governance Activated – Binding on-chain governance framework live; token holders can veto upgrades.

• Board of Directors Appointed – Added Joy Lam, Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Professor Wen Yonggang and an Advisor, CPA Ren Jang

• Trailblazers Season 6 – New quests and reward pool engaging thousands of users.

Protocol & Technical Milestones

Preconfirmations on Mainnet

Q3 saw Pacaya hardfork deliver on its promise with preconfirmations going live on Alethia mainnet, slashing Taiko’s effective confirmation time from ~45 seconds to ~2 seconds.

Initially, Phase 1 preconfirmations are running with select whitelisted partners to ensure stability. As the system proves out, it will open up permissionlessly in Phase 2, allowing anyone to run a preconfirmation node just like anyone can be an L1 validator.

Hoodi Testnet & Hekla Deprecation

We also launched Hoodi, a brand-new public testnet, which now serves as the main playground for Taiko development, allowing developers to test ultra-fast tx finality and other upcoming features in conditions that closely mirror mainnet.

Protocol Upgrades & Performance

Beyond headline features, Q3 included continuous improvements to Taiko’s protocol and performance.

The team implemented various post-Pacaya optimizations to further stabilize preconfirmations and reduce overhead:

• Taiko maintained 100% ZK proof coverage for all its own proposed blocks (as achieved in Q2), and community provers continued handling a growing share of network proofs.

• Almost 1 billion transactions have now been processed on Taiko since launch (cumulative), with activity remaining high throughout Q3.

The network consistently processed hundreds of thousands of daily transactions, reflecting sustained user demand despite low fees.

All these advancements reinforce Taiko’s position as a cutting-edge, high-throughput rollup that doesn’t compromise on Ethereum-equivalence or security.

Ecosystem & Partnerships

Q3 was marked by strategic moves to broaden Taiko’s ecosystem and deepen its technical partnerships:

Strategic Partnership with Nethermind

We partnered  with Nethermind to accelerate production-ready based rollup infrastructure. This collaboration focused on advancing preconfirmation systems, implementing EIP-7917 for trust-minimized sequencing, and developing permissionless mainnet-ready infrastructure. Together we are turning cutting-edge research into resilient systems with zero compromise on decentralization.

Real-Time Data with Dune Analytics

Taiko data went live on Dune , giving the entire community access to real-time on-chain insights through customizable dashboards, enabling everyone to track ecosystem growth, wallet activity, governance participation, and dApp adoption across 100+ live protocols. Featured dashboards launched for Taiko Overview, World of Dypians, Intraverse, and Brigade, making it easier than ever to explore what's happening on-chain.

Chainlink Data Streams Integration

Taiko officially integrated Chainlink’s Data Streams oracle into the L2, establishing it as the default oracle infrastructure for Taiko Alethia.

DAO & Governance

After a “soft launch” in Q2 with the Security Council, Q3 focused on empowering the community with real governance rights. In early October when Taiko activated binding on-chain governance on mainnet, officially handing critical decision powers to token holders.

Under this model, any protocol upgrade or parameter change is subject to an on-chain governance proposal. During a set review period, the global community of $TAIKO holders can veto the proposal if they disagree.

To support the transition to full decentralization, we welcomed  three distinguished Board of Directors. They are:

• Joy Lam, former Head of Global Regulatory at Binance (expert in legal/regulatory matters);

• Felix Oberholzer-Gee, a Harvard Business School professor and authority on strategy and digital innovation;

• Prof. Wen Yonggang, an IEEE Fellow and blockchain researcher from NTU Singapore.

• Additionally, Ren Jang (Head of Strategy at Flipster) joined as an advisor.

This heavyweight board brings a wealth of experience in compliance, business strategy, and technology to ensure Taiko’s governance is  decentralized as well as effective and resilient.

Learn more: https://taiko.mirror.xyz/IL5RRPbR86dXJV5mjIHnPiXMFgArX6XeZDg0dVdDN5U

Community Programs & Engagement

Taiko’s community remained one of the most vibrant in Web3 during Q3 2025. Our focus has been on keeping this community engaged, educated and rewarded for their contributions. Here are some key community updates from Q3:

Trailblazers Season 5 Conclusion

Trailblazers, our flagship gamified community program, successfully wrapped up Season 5 on September 15 with a reward pool of 3,000,000 TAIKO to the top Trailblazers.

Trailblazers Evolves in Season 6: Just as one season ended, another began. On Sept 15, we launched Trailblazers Season 6, introducing some of the biggest changes to the program since its inception. This season splits the competition into two parallel tracks: The Arena and The Undercity.

Education & Content

Education remains a top priority. In Q3 we published multiple blog posts and videos to help users and developers understand Taiko’s tech:

• Our blog posts explained in plain language how based preconfirmations work and why they matter – those articles saw thousands of reads and helped drive home Taiko’s unique value prop.

• We also shared developer guides on using the new preconfirmation APIs and updated our docs with Hoodi testnet details.

• Additionally, our team members appeared on community calls, Twitter Spaces, and podcasts (like ZK House and Layer2 Roundup) to discuss Taiko’s developments.

These efforts ensure that our community stays informed and new members have plenty of resources for onboarding.

An informed community is an empowered community and we love to see it!

Galxe Quests & Campaigns

To broaden our reach, we continued the series of monthly Galxe campaigns highlighting notable projects in the Taiko ecosystem.

In Q3, we ran campaigns featuring projects like GemsTown, Symbiosis, CoNFT, and others. Each campaign drew thousands of participants, many of whom were new to Taiko. By completing simple tasks (e.g. making a swap on Taiko, try a game demo, follow project socials), users discovered the richness of Taiko’s ecosystem.

Events & Outreach

Taiko’s global presence hit new highs in Q3 2025 as the team actively engaged with the Ethereum community at major industry events and also organized our own gatherings:

• Moon Party with K11 Art Foundation (Seoul): In early September, we proudly powered the Moon Party as its blockchain partner, a dazzling celebration hosted by the K11 Art Foundation in Seoul. The event brought together world-class brands like Maserati, Hypebeast, and many others, blending art, culture, and innovation under one unforgettable moonlit night.

• Korea Blockchain Week (Seoul): In early September, Taiko had a strong showing at KBW 2025  and the surrounding events in Seoul. Our founders and team members spent the week connecting with developers, users, and fellow builders. We also organized the official Taiko Seoulmates Party, a packed side event that brought together the community for music and networking.

• TOKEN2049 Singapore & Builders Day: Later in the month, Taiko turned its attention to Singapore for TOKEN2049 (one of Asia’s premier Web3 conferences).On Sept 30 we partnered with ForkOff and IoNet to host the “AI, DePIN & RWA Builders” forum, a side-event forum exploring the intersection of emerging Web3 sectors.

The message was clear: Taiko's Q3 breakthroughs have landed. Based preconfirmations and binding governance aren't just technical wins. They've established Taiko as a protocol to watch in Ethereum's next chapter.

Looking Ahead

As we move into the final quarter of 2025, Taiko is gearing up for some major milestones that will propel our network to new heights:

• Shasta Hard Fork – 100% ZK & Lower Fees: Our next mainnet upgrade, code-named Shasta, is on the horizon for Q4.

• Gwyneth Testnet & Beyond: Work continues on Taiko Gwyneth, our experimental “booster rollup” that offers synchronous composability with Ethereum L1. In Q3, our research team finished the design and internal demos of cross-chain atomic transactions using Gwyneth.

• Permissionless Preconfirmations (Phase 2): With Phase 1 preconfs stable on the mainnet, the next step is to open preconfirmations to all. This will truly decentralize the block-building process on Taiko, fulfilling the vision of proposer-prover separation.

• Community Growth. We plan new community programs to grow our developer and user base. Trailblazers Season 6 will run through year-end, now with new “Undercity” challenges. Educational campaigns and community grants will ensure more people can easily start building on Taiko.

• Ecosystem & Events. Looking to Q4, we will attend major blockchain conferences (e.g. Devconnect) to demo Taiko’s tech. We’re also exploring collaborations with RWA and AI to expand Taiko’s utility.

Closing Thoughts

Q3 2025 was a quarter of execution and acceleration. We didn't just talk about preconfirmations; we shipped them. We didn't just promise decentralized governance, we activated it. And we didn't just hope for ecosystem growth, we built the partnerships and infrastructure to make it inevitable.

With nearly 1 billion transactions processed, a thriving community of developers and users, world-class partners like Nethermind, Chainlink, and Dune, and a clear roadmap ahead, Taiko is well-positioned to become the leading Ethereum-equivalent rollup.

The future is based. The future is fast. The future is Taiko.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.