2025-08-11 Waku Weekly

Highlights §

• nwaku:
  • nim-ffi with protobuf PoC created
  • RLN codebase cleanup

Incentivise running a Waku infrastructure node §

• Service Incentivisation - Pay for RLN provision PoC

  • achieved: [research] PoC dogfooding, PM presentations
  • next: [research] discuss MVP, publish the POC blog post, demo POC at townhall

• Service Incentivisation - Service incentivisation roadmap & spec

  • achieved: [research] core team reaching consensus on next steps, documented in forum post
  • next: [research] start document to discuss different payment design tradeoffs, more detailed requirements

Integrate nwaku in status desktop relay mode only §

• Nwaku in Status Desktop
  • achieved: [nwaku] An alpha Status Desktop with nwaku was created (Infra created it.)

Introduce E2E Reliability in Status Communities §

• SDS protocol in Status - basic recovery
  • achieved: [research] testing retrieval hint implementation in sds-go-bindings, nim-sds retrieval hint PR update for ‘app cannot fill retrieval hint for received missing deps’ tested
  • next: [research] raise PR for sds-go-binding retrieval hint

Improve DevEx: API, TWN, Metrics, Docs §

• Introduce Waku API in the Browser

  • next:
    • [js-waku] lightPush v3: determine if light push peer supports v3
    • [js-waku] lightPush v3: add types for new error codes

• Optimise Browser Bootstrapping

  • achieved: [js-waku] measure and investigate cold/warm bootstrap after recent improvements
  • next:
    • [js-waku] improve peer exchange by enabling continuous queries to connected peers
    • [js-waku] improve peer exchange speed time
    • [js-waku] refine local peer exchange discovery and heuristics

Introduce Mixnet For Message Sending §

• Integrate libp2p mix into lightpush
  • achieved: [research] presented chat2 app with integrated mix at townhall
  • blockers: [research] waiting for reply-path SURB implementation in nim-libp2p

Create Chat SDK MVP §

• Create Rate Limit Manager
  • achieved: [chat] addressing comments in PRs 6 5
  • next: [chat] merge rate limit PRs 6 5

Formalize and Expand Waku Web Apps §

• Forum PoC

  • achieved:
    • [chat] ethereum wallet integration (multichain wallet support (eth + btc) using reown appkit) multi chain signature support for key delegation
    • [chat] ENS verification along with Ordinals
    • [chat] reddit-like feed UI
  • next:
    • [chat] relevance algorithm for posts ranking in the feed
    • [chat] allow flagged anonymous interactions on the forum

• Reliable Qaku & library

  • achieved: [chat] update Dispatcher to latest js-waku, verify functionality + update existing apps (Qaku, Trollbox, Lope)
  • next: [chat] continue on furps

Acquire first 10 Customers §

• 5-10 Highly qualified leads
  • achieved:
    • [chat] vibe coding session: content/zDvZRwzkzj3LyLSCVafAUTsPt8gsxseqbm5f4SZS5qZbZ8HmLL18
    • [chat] Submit talks for Cypherpunk Congress Buenos Aires

RLN Mainnet §

• Create nim-ffi
  • next:
    • [nwaku] Create fundamental nim-ffi repository that extracts the current libwaku logic.
    • [nwaku] Opinionated ffi solution demo which uses protobuf and auto de/marshalling.

Harden RLN Testnet Deployment §

• Minting of (Sepolia) ERC-20 Tokens for RLN Deposits is permissioned
  • achieved: [research] Updated RLN token to TST with mint permissions required
  • next: [research] Add minter-role to TST and burn eth sepolia to mint

BD §

BD Update

Maintenance §

• achieved:
  • [js-waku] bloom filter protobuf bug
  • [js-waku] should not self-acknowledge messages
  • [js-waku] SDS improvements and fixes, revisit API
  • [js-waku] visually model data types and function flow for core protocols
• next:
  • [nwaku] Fix: detach partition
  • [nwaku] Remove off-chain tree
  • [nwaku] Bump dependencies for v0.37.0
  • [nwaku] nwaku-compose simplification