Willow

The first blockchain indexer to prove correctness and completeness. Verifiable on-chain.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Willow is now serving RPC!

Super low-cost, with every block verified before we serve it. Cryptographic proofs available up front or on demand.

The next step in making verifiable data everyday infrastructure. 🫡

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Last week at Devcon Mumbai, Ethereum Foundation's own @jchaskin22 spent time highlighting the exact issue Willow was created to solve.

Ethereum is meant to be trustless, and it can only achieve that if the access layer is trustless too!

[marilyn100x.eth @marilyn100x]

"Now that core is developed, we're shifting focus to the access." - @jchaskin22

Jason says the properties Ethereum guarantees at its core still fail to reach most users, who rely on gatekeepers like RPCs and app frontends.

I asked him how @ethereum brings those properties to every user.

> What is the main gap between how Ethereum is supposed to work and what most people experience?
> Which intermediaries still sit between users and Ethereum, and which can we already remove?
> Which part of a normal user flow forces the largest trust assumption?
What still needs to land before wallets stop defaulting to trusted RPCs?
> Which Ethereum guarantees do builders care most about preserving?
> What change in wallets or dApps would show the gap is closing? If this work succeeds, what would feel different for an ordinary user?

Full Q&A👇

[Paul DeLucia | Willow @paul1delucia]

Last week we found two bugs that make the official Base and Arbitrum RPCs return wrong data.

Both are still live today.

They're mostly harmless, but it's a good example of why it's not safe to blindly trust your RPCs.👇

[Paul DeLucia | Willow @paul1delucia]

We tested the state-of-the-art zkVMs on our real proving workload at @willow_protocol.

We ran five of them on the same GPU, using real Ethereum, Base, and Robinhood Chain blocks.

The fastest one we can use today is OpenVM by @axiom_xyz, at about two-thirds of SP1's time. 👇

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Trust less. Verify more.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Happy Halloween friends!

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Preventable.

[Blockaid @blockaid_]

🚨Blockaid detected an ongoing exploit on @zkLink_Official bridge on ethereum.
Used a public relayer to inject a forged batch root on Ethereum, then finalized ETH and ERC20 withdrawals from zkLink Nova L1 escrow to attacker-chosen receivers.
~$786k drained from L1 ETH escrow and ERC20 bridge so far. Attack still ongoing.🧵

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Willow now serves near-instant proofs for every Ethereum block back to genesis.

[Paul DeLucia | Willow @paul1delucia]

Last week, we backfilled Ethereum’s entire history into Willow.

26,133,199 blocks, from genesis through October 22, 2026. Every single block independently verified before being stored.

Now, we have a complete, verified store of Ethereum’s history, connected to our live index.

Here’s why I’m excited about it 🧵

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Live with partners today, public access coming soon.

Want to try Willow RPC for your app? Get in touch.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Willow is now serving RPC!

Super low-cost, with every block verified before we serve it. Cryptographic proofs available up front or on demand.

The next step in making verifiable data everyday infrastructure. 🫡

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Ethereum is moving toward a world where computation happens elsewhere and only proofs reach the chain.

The same should be true for data.

Smart contracts shouldn't need to trust external indexers or oracles. They should be able to verify the data they consume.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Ultimately, precompiles and EVM are both the wrong place to put most cryptography support into Ethereum. The reason is that precompiles and EVM both operate on data that has to be included into the ethereum chain somehow, which realistically means included in a block as calldata. That space is limited - even with PeerDAS and blocks-in-blobs, there's a practical cap of ~8 MB/s before it starts getting uncomfortable.

Remember: it's not a blockchain. It's a cryptographic world computer. Any data/computation that does not need to be in the "main thread" of data/execution should not be put into the main thread.

Instead, the correct solution is... EIP-8288 maximalism.

If you have any heavy computation that's self-contained, compute it and STARK it client-side (this is quickly getting faster and faster, even on phones), and push the STARK through the EIP-8288 recursive aggregation mechanism. The chain sees the fact that the computation was done and what the result is; it never needs to see the actual data and computation.

This way everyone can use whatever cryptography they want, the Ethereum chain can be lean, and we never need to add more precompiles again.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Tx: https://t.co/HgzqHSFMZM

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Willow now supports @StellarOrg, our first non-EVM chain.

A contract on Ethereum mainnet verified our proof of 64 Stellar ledgers, with 20,361 Soroban events and balance changes.

Ethereum contracts can now act on Stellar data trustlessly 🤝

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@ChanniGreenwall Yep

[Willow @willow_protocol]

The GENIUS Act takes effect no later than January 18, 2027.

Among other things, it requires the CEO and CFO of every permitted US stablecoin issuer to certify their tokens outstanding each month.

With a Willow proof, they can sign knowing it's correct 👇 https://t.co/d2U7957D8p

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@Chriz_211 If the chain is feasibly provable, we can add support. It differs for every non-EVM chain.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Introducing eth-historian, our open-source library for verifying historical Ethereum data.

Until now, there were basically two options if you wanted to read old Ethereum (pre-Capella) data off-chain:

→ trust an RPC/indexer
→ run a multi-TB archive node

eth-historian introduces a third, easy, trustless option.

It allows anyone to pull a block, all the way back to genesis, from any source, even one they don't trust, and then verify it's real against Ethereum's own records.

Then, you can verify that any specific tx, receipt or log is in that block.

This is what enables Willow's historical indexing to prove the event lists it delivers.

Rust, TS, Python, Go. MIT/Apache. PR/Issues welcome.

https://t.co/gF3SMIEM4N

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@_Eazyboy_ @arbitrum @RobinhoodCrypto @Optimism @unichain @inkonchain Willow gives you a SNARK (zk proof) that shows every indexed event is really on chain, none were missed, and any calculations over those events are correct. It's a proof that your smart contract (or anyone) can verify itself before executing on the indexed data or calculation.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

Major upgrade!

Willow now supports Arbitrum One, Robinhood Chain, OP Mainnet, Unichain, and Ink, in addition to Ethereum and Base.

Contracts on each chain can now act on data from all others trustlessly 🤝

@arbitrum @RobinhoodCrypto @Optimism @unichain @inkonchain

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@ShieldifySec @arbitrum @RobinhoodCrypto @Optimism @unichain @inkonchain They can be if someone asks for it!

These five were fairly easy adds since they're all EVM chains that settle on Ethereum, so our existing circuits only needed small modifications to support them.

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@_Eazyboy_ With The Graph or Dune, you trust that the data was indexed correctly.

With Willow, you get a proof that shows:

- Every event is really on-chain
- No events were missed
- Every value computed from the events is correct

And your smart contract can verify the proof itself 🤝

[Willow @willow_protocol]

@_Eazyboy_ With The Graph or Dune, you trust that the data was indexed correctly.

With Willow, you get a proof that shows:

- Every event is really on-chain
- No events were missed
- Every value computed from the events is correct

And your smart contract can verify the proof itself 🤝

[Willow @willow_protocol]

https://t.co/PZxOOSyMJH