Waku Monthly Update - July 2025

Every month, we’ll bring you the latest highlights and progress from the Waku team. To receive these updates directly in your inbox, consider subscribing to our newsletter.

If you want to get involved with Waku or integrate reliable, privacy-preserving p2p comms with your project, read through our documentation and join our Discord to get started.

July was a productive and insightful month for the development of Waku.

The team published a host of recommendations generated from the recent virtual offsite, we released nwaku v0.36, and made significant progress towards our ongoing milestones.

Below are the highlights from Waku for July 2025.

Technical updates

End-to-end reliability, Chat SDK, and hardening private chats

In July, the Waku team made substantial progress on end-to-end reliability. The Nim implementation of SDS (Scalable Data Sync) was refactored to support multiple channels per reliability manager, necessary to support multiple Communities for a user. 

Status integration testing showed positive results due to the latest SDS changes.

The private chat rate limiting proof-of-concept progressed with key improvements, including integration of nwaku’s limit bucket, SQLite support for persistent state, and real-time capacity exposure for applications. This a key piece of the Chat SDK to enable it to work smoothly with RLN Relay.

Prototypes of the Inbox functionality were created for Chat SDK in both Nim and Rust implementations. Initial framing types for ConversationsAPI were established, providing the foundation for future development. The Inbox specification was proposed and submitted for community review.

RLN on mainnet and incentivisation PoC

July marked substantial progress toward RLN mainnet deployment, with all updates for the new incentivisation smart contract completed. We verified that keystore credentials from the Waku Keystore Management service work correctly with nwaku and updated waku-simulator to work with the new contract implementation.

July saw the service incentivisation proof-of-concept reach its first dogfoodable version, enabling Lightpush nodes to test eligibility parameters via CLI. Ongoing work includes the analysis of probabilistic encryption and micropayment models, community feedback on the proposed MVP, and efforts to streamline setup and documentation for wider testing.

Nwaku v0.36 and Status Desktop integration

Nwaku v0.36 was released last month, bringing significant enhancements to RLN through the newly deployed RLNv2 smart contract.

The new release now uses a fully onchain zero-knowledge Merkle tree, removing the need to sync a local Merkle tree when setting up your node. RLN membership now also requires an onchain deposit, moving the implementation closer to its final form.

Currently, anyone running a node mints a specific ERC-20 and uses it as a deposit for this contract on Linea Sepolia, but the intent for mainnet is that the contract will require DAI for authentication.

View the full changelog for nwaku v0.36 on GitHub.

In July, nwaku integration into Status Desktop also reached key milestones, including full metrics integration via status-go and successful Windows builds using the go-waku-first approach.

Waku for web, Mixnet, and DevEx

A new version of js-waku was released in July, delivering several improvements. Browser connection management and reliability were optimised. Connection pruning and management received comprehensive updates,  and peer selection improvements were implemented across all protocols.

The ConnectionManager was refactored for better maintainability, WebSocket error handling was improved, and the removal of node-level pubsub topics simplified the architecture. Store queries were optimised by limiting them to 24-hour chunks, and a unified Waku events system was created to simplify development.

The Mixnet integration proof-of-concept progressed with the successful rebasing of the mix-nwaku pull request and the introduction of a new configuration model via mix-config. The chat2 app was updated to support publishing via the Mixnet, enabling real-world testing.

API development progressed with LightPush v3 protocol definitions and separate events modules for Waku-specific events. Health indicator usage was simplified according to updated specifications, making it easier for developers to monitor Waku implementations in their apps.

Recommendations from the virtual offsite

In July, Waku team members published and discussed their recommendations that emerged from the recent virtual offsite event, exploring possible ways forward on everything from service incentivisation to developer documentation.

These key learnings generated productive discussions that helped to quickly identify and prioritise challenges in protocol design, with open debates on each of the virtual offsite sessions occurring on the Vac forum.

Among the most important takeaways from the Waku virtual offsite was the communal drafting of a vision and mission statement for the project, along with defining the principles that underlie its design.

Waku Incentivisation PoC and RLN strategy

July saw productive and varied discussions on elements of the Waku protocol stack on the Vac forum.

The team published a proof-of-concept service incentivisation scheme for Waku’s Lightpush protocol that leverages a basic implementation of RLN-as-a-Service (RLNaaS).

Its goal is to introduce a minimal but practically feasible system for incentivising service provision on Waku, managing payments, and tracking on-chain reputation.

Public discussions also explored the different ways in which RLN could be implemented, with Waku team members responding to suggestions around offloading the generation of RLN proofs to trusted execution environments (TEEs) and using a signature instead of a private key for the RLN circuit.

Other Waku-related discussions on the Vac forum encompassed more abstract ideas,  such as considering whether it is possible or feasible to route Ethernet packets over Waku.

An open conversation with Plebbit

In July, the Waku team also published an ongoing open discussion with the developers of Plebbit, a decentralised Reddit alternative, which touched on protocol design motivations, infrastructure operation, and more.

The conversation offers a great insight into the design choices made by the Waku team and the project’s considerations going forward.

Read and join the open conversation between Waku and Plebbit.

Waku events

July began with EthCC in Cannes, France, where Waku’s Danish hosted a technical workshop on the Waku tech stack and Sasha delivered a presentation.

Danish then stayed on in France to join the PrivyCycle hackathon during ETHGlobal.

Last month, Waku also joined the Nillion Discord to participate in a privacy-focused AMA, growing the Waku community and promoting collaboration across privacy-focused projects.

Follow our socials for the latest news from the Waku team and announcements on where we’ll be heading next.

Subscribe to the Waku newsletter to get the latest updates directly in your inbox.