Waku Monthly Update - September 2025

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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.

September was a busy month for Waku, from the development of proposals for decentralised service incentivisation to the release of js-waku v0.0.35 with several major improvements.

Check out the highlights from Waku for September 2025.

Technical updates

Service incentivisation and RLN testnet

September brought significant progress on service incentivisation. The team outlined a decentralised custodial incentive payment protocol using ZK tickets combined with probabilistic payments to mitigate double spending risks. 

Work also continued on fractional message transfer, supporting cryptographic derivatives, and assessing high-throughput plug-ins for scalability. 

In parallel, hardening of the RLN testnet moved forward with fixes to the test token contract, verification of proxy and minter role functions, and dogfooding of Sepolia ETH burn mechanics. 

Upgrades to zerokit in the Waku RLN package also improved credential management in the browser.

Reliability, Status Desktop, and Chat SDK

End-to-end reliability improved with Scalable Data Sync (SDS) integration into Status. 

Status Desktop was successfully compiled with SDS on Windows, nim-sds work began for iOS, and progress was made on an Android APK including libsds. 

Phase one of community shards was merged, enabling more efficient routing as communities expand. Chat SDK also advanced: the proof-of-concept was migrated to the nimbus-build-system, an echo bot demo showcased functionality, and testing confirmed reliable publish/subscribe with nwaku. 

Fixes were also applied to RLN dependencies within the build process.

JS-Waku SDK v0.0.35 and web apps

The release of js-waku v0.0.35 delivered improved peer longevity, experimental reliable channels, and LightPush v3 refinements including error handling and peer support detection.

Developer tooling also saw a range of enhancements. Work on the new Waku API in the browser advanced with Codec entities, message storage, and progress on the Send API. 

Global network metrics now include shard and user agent labels, with dashboard updates providing clearer visibility into topology and diversity. 

On the application side, OpChan was refactored to extract a reusable library, SCALA (a secure calendar app) was designed to demonstrate privacy-preserving coordination, and Qaku was better integrated with the Waku test network and cache system to strengthen reliability.

Mixnet, privacy, and infrastructure

Mixnet integration reached a key milestone with nodes deployed on the Waku Network, followed by dogfooding and subsequent fixes. 

The proof-of-concept was merged to master after implementing SURB functionality, while rendezvous discovery was introduced to resolve ENR size constraints. A detailed post explained how mix can be integrated into js-waku, offering guidance for browser-based privacy features.

Infrastructure and maintenance work also progressed: nim-libp2p was upgraded to v1.13, outdated CLI arguments were deprecated, testing packages were consolidated, and issues with TCP transport, stream closing, and JSON serialisation were resolved. 

Database monitoring was strengthened, improving performance tracking under load.

Logos Privacy in Practice Campaign with Funding the Commons

From 23 September to 16 October 2025, Logos and Funding the Commons are hosting the RealFi Hackathon, an event designed to move beyond theory and deliver tools with real-world impact. 

Participants are invited to form teams, select challenges, and build on technologies including Waku, Nimbus, and Tor-compatible infrastructure.

Bounties of up to $4,000 are available for 1-2 winning projects in two key tracks:

• Resilient Activist Technology: solutions to shield activists from censorship and surveillance.
• Logos x Tor Privacy Infrastructure: innovations that strengthen Tor’s privacy guarantees.

As the communications component of Logos, Waku supports this initiative as part of its mission to provide a modular, privacy-preserving communication stack for easy integration.

In a time when surveillance and censorship threaten open societies from Nepal to the UK, this hackathon offers builders a chance to contribute to technologies that can protect non-violent resistance and civic action worldwide.

Sign-ups are open now - get involved.

ZK-based ticket system for store service incentivisation

Last month, Waku advanced its service incentivisation efforts with the proposal of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to reward the provision of Waku Store services. The proposed design introduces a ticket-based payment protocol underpinned by zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, aiming to deliver both robustness and privacy in service incentivisation.

The MVP centres on a single service provider operating six service nodes, with a focus on the mechanics of issuing, spending, and redeeming tickets. Each ticket functions as a bearer instrument granting access to Store services, whilst ensuring unlinkability between payment and service provision. 

The system is designed to prevent trivial fraud, avoid per-request on-chain costs through batch operations, and maintain a minimal protocol surface to enable rapid iteration.

Whilst the MVP proposed offers an initial approach designed for simplicity and feasibility, it establishes a clear upgrade path. 

Future development envisages expanding into a decentralised marketplace of multiple service providers, supported by reputation systems, progressive trust mechanisms, dynamic pricing, and alternative payment methods.

Read more on the Vac forum about how this proposal aims to align the implementation of service provision incentives with Waku’s principles of privacy preservation and decentralisation.

Using ZKPassport and Waku to register RLN membership

Last month also saw Waku’s Václav Pavlín hack together a demo that integrates ZKPassport with Waku to provide privacy-preserving identity verification for RLN membership registration.

RLN (Rate-Limiting Nullifier), Waku’s privacy-preserving rate-limiting framework, uses permissioned membership commitment to prevent spam and DoS in a decentralised messaging network.

The integration demonstrated by Václav allows RLN membership to be verified using ZKPassport’s proof of personhood, and the addition of Waku helps the user avoid linking their wallet information to their RLN membership, further preserving their privacy.

Watch the full demo below:

Other interesting topics raised within the Waku ecosystem last month included a discussion on how to implement Waku Mix in JavaScript and JS-Waku so that web app developers could begin using and texting the Mix protocol implementation.

Read the full discussion on the Vac forum.

Waku vibe coding livestreams

Last month, the Waku team continued exploring AI-assisted vibe coding to find and experiment with use cases building on the Waku stack.

These sessions were livestreamed on a weekly basis and included guests from within Waku and others interested in building with scalable and reliable p2p comms.

Check out a few of the Waku team’s latest vibe coding sessions below:

• Vibe coding a meme board with @declensh
• Vibe coding with ZKPassport using Venice and Kilo Code
• Vibe coding and integrating ZKPassport with OpChan

Events

As the communications component of Logos, the Waku team was well represented at several Logos Circle events around the world last month, along with contributors from other Logos projects and like-minded developers and activists interested in joining the Logos movement.

Logos Circle events were held in Los Angeles, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Brno, and we look forward to attending and helping to host more events in these cities in the future.

Last month, the first Logos Circle was hosted in Benin, Nigeria, where participants addressed pressing local challenges and mapped out community-driven solutions aligned with Logos’s human-first principles.

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

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