Chris: What inspired the creation of Zircuit, and what specific pain points in the L2 space were you trying to solve with your hybrid zk-rollup architecture?
Zircuit Team: The inspiration to create Zircuit came from the blockchain security angle. Our founding team has deep roots in blockchain auditing. Each of us has been working in web3 for nearly a decade, and we have seen the same pattern again and again: protocol hacks that could have been prevented with more proactive defenses.
With every incident, we kept asking the same question: could blockchains themselves be more proactive when it comes to protecting the traffic on-chain? This problem is not limited to L2s. But as L2s became more and more widespread, we saw an opportunity to build our own L2 with enhanced security guarantees for the users. That vision led to Zircuit, built on a novel architecture that embeds protection directly into the infrastructure.
Chris: You’ve blended zero-knowledge proofs with battle-tested infrastructure like the OP Stack and Geth. How did this hybrid model come about, and what were the biggest challenges in merging those systems?
Zircuit Team: When choosing the stack for building Zircuit, our goal wasn’t just to build; it was also to build something durable. We knew that we wanted a rollup on Ethereum, and we knew that we wanted the rollup to be a zero-knowledge rollup. The remainder are choices that we made along the way.
We chose to start building using the OP Stack because it provided a convenient foundation, offering many of the core services that rollups need in a generic form. We then modified the stack to work with our prover. OP Stack internally works with a modified version of Geth. Together, both codebases have undergone years of development and numerous security improvements. They are also both still well-maintained and alive, which means that we continue to benefit from our ability to compare implementations, inherit from the upstream, and work on problems that many other developers in the space are trying to solve.
This alignment is a major advantage, and we often compare notes with other teams. And while this is a tremendous advantage, retaining it is also the biggest challenge. With every modification that we choose to make for Zircuit to be even more special, we divert from upstream. We often find ourselves in a situation that requires a three-way merge of codebases. It requires diligence and experience — but with solid engineering practices and thorough testing, we’ve consistently managed it.
Chris: Zircuit introduces a novel concept: “Security at the Sequencer Level.” How does this fundamentally shift the security model compared to traditional app-level or smart contract-level protections?
Zircuit Team: Security at the Sequencer Level, or SLS in abbreviation, scans every single transaction that the chain is processing for malicious intent, and automatically freezes those identified as harmful. The detection is powered using AI models specifically trained for this purpose. It can use multiple detectors specialized for specific kinds of analyses, and it can be equipped with new detectors adapted over time as the security and threat space evolves.
Zircuit currently uses multiple providers, all of which have demonstrated high accuracy. Based on the evaluation from other chains, the best ones exceed a 99.5% success rate in identifying real hacks, meaning that from 200 real blockchain hacks, they miss only 1 on average. To put that into perspective, it’s hard to even name 200 exploits on a single chain; and that’s exactly the level of protection Zircuit provides by default.
SLS is not an add-on; it’s embedded directly into Zircuit. This is the fundamental shift - security is no longer something developers have to implement themselves. It’s built into Zircuit, protecting every transaction and keeping protocols safe long after they’ve been shipped, audited, and deployed; ensuring that assets remain in the hands of their rightful owners.
Chris: Can you walk us through how Zircuit decomposes circuits into specialized parts for parallel proof generation? How does that affect latency and throughput in practice?
Zircuit Team: I could walk you through how we decompose circuits for parallel proving, but soon, that won’t be relevant. Starting in September 2025, Zircuit will shift to a zkVM-based architecture.
The field of zkSNARKs and zero-knowledge proof for computations has evolved a lot since we started developing Zircuit. Fortunately, one of our earliest design decisions that we made was developing a modular framework that allows us to easily integrate, swap, and evaluate multiple provers.
The prover that is currently used in production is based on Halo2, and it decomposes into multiple steps where some can be completed quickly and cheaply, and some require higher computing resources. The current prover works with the proof structure in a clever way, which allows us to conduct some of these steps in parallel, and use the computing time and hardware in a quite efficient way. While this prover is quite efficient, it is not comfortable to develop with, because every change in Zircuit needs to be encoded in the prover.
We recognize that with the recent advances of zkVM, which are zero-knowledge machines for general-purpose computing, we’re confident we can maintain the same low-latency performance with significantly less development overhead. The chain parameters will remain the same at the time of the launch - 100 transactions in a block with 2-second block time, so 2 seconds to get a transaction on-chain for the user. Accelerating block production will be a key focus of our core development in 2025, and we’re optimistic that we can deliver those improvements quickly.
Chris: You’ve launched a “Build to Earn” program. How does that work exactly, and how are you measuring the success or impact of this initiative on ecosystem growth?
Zircuit Team: The Build to Earn program was our first developer incentive program. It was launched in March 2024, roughly six months before Zircuit launched mainnet. It was intentionally open-ended: developers simply submitted what they were building through a form on our website, and our ecosystem and devrel teams reached out individually to offer support. We received over 1,400 submissions, hand-selected the most promising projects, and awarded over $200,000 in grants.
While Build to Earn is no longer active, we’ll be launching a new grant program in August 2025. This round will include two major grants for future “super apps” on Zircuit, along with several smaller grants for other standout projects. When the program opens, details and the application process will be shared on blog.zircuit.com, our official X account, and Discord.
Beyond grant funding, we actively support hackathons and host our own ecosystem events. These aren’t just for developers; they’re places where the entire community can engage with the Zircuit team, showcase what they’re building, and learn more about how we’re building Zircuit.
Chris: The Zircuit bridge supports 120+ chains. What does the cross-chain experience look like for the end user — and how do you mitigate bridge-specific attack vectors?
Zircuit Team: Zircuit builds and operates the canonical bridge that connects Zircuit as a rollup to Ethereum. This bridge is called canonical because it is the bridge responsible for creating ETH on Zircuit in the first place.
Beyond this, Zircuit is integrated with a broader set of chains via interoperability protocols like LayerZero and bridge providers like Rhino. These protocols connect Zircuit to all the remaining chains.
The canonical bridge is fully controlled by Zircuit and monitored and protected by the SLS. The canonical bridge strictly follows the rollup protocol: it processes deposits immediately, and for withdrawal transactions, it waits for them to reach finality on L1 before releasing the funds. While finality can take several hours, which may not be suitable for everyday use with small amounts, the bridge removes all third-party risk from the process and does not charge any fees.
The remaining bridges are based on liquidity pools and controlled, directed, and operated by our partner teams. The security guarantees for these bridges differ based on the partner and the implementation. Zircuit provides all of them with SLS protection for their pools on Zircuit, but this protection unfortunately cannot extend to the bridge liquidity pools that reside on other chains.
Chris: Zircuit offers opt-in institutional transaction policies like allowlists, asset flow controls, and KYC. How are you working with institutional partners to balance compliance and decentralization?
Zircuit Team: Zircuit is a rollup on Ethereum, making it an open-access blockchain — just like Base or Optimism. Anyone can build or transact on it. However, we recognize that institutions face regulatory requirements and must remain compliant. That’s why we’ve built tools that allow them to define their own transaction rules on Zircuit.
These rules can be pretty simple. For instance, an institution might specify that its address should never receive assets from addresses on a certain list, such as those flagged by OFAC. Or it might require that specific addresses only interact with each other and only transfer designated assets. This is particularly useful for payment processors, who can use existing assets for settlement while ensuring funds never leave a trusted network of accounts.
All of these rules become part of Zircuit itself, so they will protect the account even if the signers of transactions get tricked into signing something they should not, as we have seen in some very damaging incidents on Ethereum at the beginning of the year.
Rule-based processing is entirely optional and available only to institutional users. Institutions can decide which parts of DeFi and the broader blockchain economy they want to engage with, while opting out of the rest. Meanwhile, regular retail users remain completely unrestricted.
Chris: Zircuit has a native token ($ZRC) but uses ETH for gas. What’s the purpose of the token, and how does it integrate with your long-term incentive structure for devs and users?
Zircuit Team: Blockchain protocols, especially decentralized ones, need ways to measure and assign weights or stakes to different participants when executing certain actions. These can include governance votes, validating computations, or controlling access to certain features, among many others. Tokens are a practical way to implement these mechanisms.
ZRC was created as part of Zircuit’s infrastructure to serve this purpose. It’s available for use by developers, the broader community, and our internal team as we explore and implement new features.
The protocol actions that use weights-based tokens usually require certain preconditions, such as relative scarcity of the token, a large distributed holder base that makes accumulation difficult. This is so that the probabilistic assumptions in consensus protocols work out. Our initial distribution of ZRC to early users and supporters was intentionally designed to meet these conditions, ensuring the token has real utility.
From the beginning, we’ve been transparent about our intention to continue allocating ZRC in a strategic and targeted way — to support developers and users building within the Zircuit ecosystem. Our first initiative was Build to Earn, which has since concluded. In August 2025, we’ll launch a new developer grant program. We’ll be looking to support emerging super apps as well as smaller, high-impact projects that resonate with their niche user base. There will be a ZRC component included in these grants, and users can look to upcoming incentive campaigns as well.
Chris: Zircuit is still early, but already has a vibrant developer and user base. How are you cultivating that culture, and what’s your approach to progressive decentralization?
Zircuit Team: We cultivate our builders by providing comprehensive support that goes far beyond grants. Zircuit maintains an open-door policy for any project interested in shaping the future of our ecosystem. We actively sponsor, participate in, and show up for key ecosystem events, not just digitally, but in person.
This year, we supported ETHCC and partnered with ETHGlobal, participating in their hackathons and Pragma conferences. Our team doesn’t just attend — we engage directly: giving technical talks, hosting booths known for great swag, and organizing well-received community gatherings where builders and users can connect with the Zircuit team face to face.
Regarding progressive decentralization, it’s well on the way. This year, we have already deployed a trustless escape hatch, and within the next month, we’ll open-source our node software so anyone can run a Zircuit node. We’re also exploring the introduction of additional sequencers to the protocol. As our codebase matures, we’ll continue down this path, taking thoughtful, incremental steps toward full decentralization.
Chris: What’s your boldest prediction for Zircuit — not just in market share, but in how it changes how people think about on-chain security and application design?
Zircuit Team: Zircuit has already accomplished what no other blockchain has: it’s the first to embed proactive, intelligent, and efficient security directly into the protocol itself. For years, developers have treated security as something external, handled by audits, bug bounties, or third-party tools layered on top of the stack. But Zircuit changes that narrative: it embeds security directly into the infrastructure itself, at the sequencer level.
This fundamentally changes how teams approach application design. Developers no longer have to assume they’re on their own, that once a contract is deployed, it’s entirely up to them to defend it forever. On Zircuit, the chain participates in that defense. Security becomes a shared responsibility between the protocol and the developer. Continuous, adaptive, and invisible to the end user.
My bold prediction is that this will become the new standard. In the future, we won’t ask whether a chain protects users by default; we’ll expect it. We’ll question why security was ever left out of the base layer to begin with.
Zircuit is paving the way for that shift. Not just with architecture, but with results. We’ve helped secure nearly $1B in assets with zero security incidents since inception. Security isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s essential infrastructure. And Zircuit is proving what that looks like in practice.
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