ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866918240970604544 |
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| author | Zou, Guangxian Zhang, Isaac Zarick, Ryan Wong, Kelvin Kim, Thomas Wong, Daniel L. -K. Yazdinejad, Saeid Boneh, Dan |
| author_facet | Zou, Guangxian Zhang, Isaac Zarick, Ryan Wong, Kelvin Kim, Thomas Wong, Daniel L. -K. Yazdinejad, Saeid Boneh, Dan |
| contents | zkVMs promise general-purpose verifiable computation through ISA-level compatibility with modern programs and toolchains. However, compatibility extends further than just the ISA; modern programs often cannot run or even compile without an operating system and libc. zkVMs attempt to address this by maintaining forks of language-specific runtimes and statically linking them into applications to create self-contained unikernels, but this ad-hoc approach leads to version hell and burdens verifiable applications (vApps) with an unnecessarily large trusted computing base. We solve this problem with ZeroOS, a modular library operating system (libOS) for vApp unikernels; vApp developers can use off-the-shelf toolchains to compile and link only the exact subset of the Linux ABI their vApp needs. Any zkVM team can easily leverage the ZeroOS ecosystem by writing a ZeroOS bootloader for their platform, resulting in a reduced maintainence burden and unifying the entire zkVM ecosystem with consolidated development and audit resources. ZeroOS is free and open-sourced at https://github.com/LayerZero-Labs/ZeroOS. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_09300 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs Zou, Guangxian Zhang, Isaac Zarick, Ryan Wong, Kelvin Kim, Thomas Wong, Daniel L. -K. Yazdinejad, Saeid Boneh, Dan Operating Systems Cryptography and Security zkVMs promise general-purpose verifiable computation through ISA-level compatibility with modern programs and toolchains. However, compatibility extends further than just the ISA; modern programs often cannot run or even compile without an operating system and libc. zkVMs attempt to address this by maintaining forks of language-specific runtimes and statically linking them into applications to create self-contained unikernels, but this ad-hoc approach leads to version hell and burdens verifiable applications (vApps) with an unnecessarily large trusted computing base. We solve this problem with ZeroOS, a modular library operating system (libOS) for vApp unikernels; vApp developers can use off-the-shelf toolchains to compile and link only the exact subset of the Linux ABI their vApp needs. Any zkVM team can easily leverage the ZeroOS ecosystem by writing a ZeroOS bootloader for their platform, resulting in a reduced maintainence burden and unifying the entire zkVM ecosystem with consolidated development and audit resources. ZeroOS is free and open-sourced at https://github.com/LayerZero-Labs/ZeroOS. |
| title | ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs |
| topic | Operating Systems Cryptography and Security |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300 |