Waku Monthly Update - April 2025
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It has been a busy month for Waku, encompassing several important technical updates to the protocol, the release of a new version of js-waku, and the first steps towards forming a roadmap for a Chat SDK API.
The month was rounded off by a productive team meetup in Split, Croatia that included Codex and Nomos, the other two protocols within the Logos tech stack, allowing the team to collaborate and explore integrating Waku with distributed storage and governance protocols.
Below are the highlights from Waku for April 2025.
Technical updates
For a full breakdown of Waku’s current state and development goals, read the project’s milestones and roadmap.
RLN implementation, service incentivisation, and mixnet
Major progress was made on the RLN (Rate Limiting Nullifier) system, including a shift from local Merkle tree management to a fully on-chain membership model. The team is currently working on a new web interface that will allow users to generate RLN credentials tied to their node address on the Linea Sepolia testnet.
Work also advanced on a proof-of-concept for service incentivisation that would enable payments for RLN usage. This included lightpush integration and a working prototype for testing the concept.
The team also progressed on a mixnet proof-of-concept by integrating libp2p mix features into Waku, with current efforts focused on running integration simulations and collecting benchmarking data.
General maintenance efforts continued across the Waku stack, with bug fixes, documentation updates, and improved tools for local debugging of issues in the Status application.
Scalable, reliable chats and nwaku in Status
Work continued on strengthening the foundation for private messaging in Status.
This included developing a proof of concept for rate-limiting using a key-value store and advancing the integration of the end-to-end reliability protocol. Notable progress was made on fixing binding callbacks and implementing go-wrapper functions.
Sharding for Status Communities also advanced, with efforts focused on defining and implementing dedicated message shards.
Integration of nwaku into Status Desktop moved forward, with improvements to peer management, connection handling, and the waku-go-bindings. Additional updates included avoiding node blocking in full channels and enhancing disconnection handling.
JS-Waku and web apps
A new version of js-waku, the web-compatible implementation of Waku, was released this last month.
Highlights included improvements to the Health Indicator, a new RLN credentials manager without Zerokit, and enhanced encoding and decoding.
The full release notes for the latest version of js-waku are available on GitHub.
Web-focused development continued with progress on scalable data sync, improved browser bootstrapping, and API refinements for message encoding and decoding.
On the application layer, the Qaku library was upgraded with a more efficient storage model and integrated Codex snapshots. The team also began experimenting with building a decentralised version of the OpChan forum using js-waku.
Waku Mix and decentralised OpChan
Last month, the Waku team conducted a number of simulations exploring the implementation of libp2p mix into the Waku protocol stack, beginning with the lightpush protocol.
The team measured the latency introduced to message transmission when using the mix protocol, finding that the majority of messages propagated to the receiving node within 40ms.
Read more about the integration of Waku Mix on the Vac forum.
Waku has also been exploring the possibility of integrating its communications protocols with OpChan, a message board designed for the post-nation-state movement.
In a post published on the Vac forum in April, Waku lead Franck Royer proposed the development of a decentralised version of OpChan built on Waku and the Logos tech stack.
A proof-of-concept is currently under development, and this could be built out to encompass a more complete features set that includes spam protection, curation methods, and support for images and other media.
Roadmap skeleton for private chat SDK API
Waku lead Franck Royer has provided a rough outline of a roadmap for creating a Private Chat SDK API, which builds upon the project’s existing milestone related to hardening and scaling the foundations for private chats.
In a post on the Vac forum, Franck proposes a bottom-up methodology to defining the Chat SDK API, where the specification of the interface emerges from the functionality of the Waku Messaging API and other necessary components.
This early skeleton of a roadmap points to the ultimate goal of having a Chat SDK API (or collection of APIs) that can be easily integrated by Status and other applications that require private one-to-one or group chats.
While this roadmap outline describes a path forward for the development of an SDK for private chats, the current priority remains the implementation of RLN and rate limits into private chats in Status.
Team meetup and upcoming events
The Waku team met up in Split, Croatia for a team off-site, where they explored the development of the protocol, discussed ongoing research, and connected with peers.
This event also offered the opportunity for Waku to align with other IFT projects and work closely with the Codex and Nomos teams on building out and refining the Logos tech stack.
Looking ahead to the next few months, the team aims to attend several events. Waku protocol research engineer Sergei will be presenting at Protocol Berg in Berlin, Germany from June 12-13, and several members of the team will be heading to EthCC in Cannes, France from June 20 - July 3.
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