{"ID":2830542,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300","arxiv_id":"2512.09300","title":"ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs","abstract":"zkVMs promise general-purpose verifiable computation through ISA-level compatibility with modern programs and toolchains. However, compatibility extends further than just the ISA; modern programs often cannot run or even compile without an operating system and libc. zkVMs attempt to address this by maintaining forks of language-specific runtimes and statically linking them into applications to create self-contained unikernels, but this ad-hoc approach leads to version hell and burdens verifiable applications (vApps) with an unnecessarily large trusted computing base. We solve this problem with ZeroOS, a modular library operating system (libOS) for vApp unikernels; vApp developers can use off-the-shelf toolchains to compile and link only the exact subset of the Linux ABI their vApp needs. Any zkVM team can easily leverage the ZeroOS ecosystem by writing a ZeroOS bootloader for their platform, resulting in a reduced maintainence burden and unifying the entire zkVM ecosystem with consolidated development and audit resources. ZeroOS is free and open-sourced at https://github.com/LayerZero-Labs/ZeroOS.","short_abstract":"zkVMs promise general-purpose verifiable computation through ISA-level compatibility with modern programs and toolchains. However, compatibility extends further than just the ISA; modern programs often cannot run or even compile without an operating system and libc. zkVMs attempt to address this by maintaining forks of...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09300v1","authors":"[\"Guangxian Zou\",\"Isaac Zhang\",\"Ryan Zarick\",\"Kelvin Wong\",\"Thomas Kim\",\"Daniel L. -K. Wong\",\"Saeid Yazdinejad\",\"Dan Boneh\"]","published":"2025-12-10T04:00:40Z","proceeding":"cs.OS","tasks":"[\"cs.OS\",\"cs.CR\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false,"code_links":[{"ID":606050,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_id":2830542,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300","paper_title":"ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs","repo_url":"https://github.com/LayerZero-Labs/ZeroOS","is_official":false,"mentioned_in_paper":false,"mentioned_in_github":true,"github_stars":0}]}