Espresso is a high-performance blockchain that provides fast, final settlement for other chains and applications. Each integrated system keeps its own execution environment and sequencer. Espresso finalizes their transaction data through its own decentralized proof-of-stake BFT consensus (HotShot). Other applications or chains can verify that finality through zero-knowledge proofs, without trusted intermediaries.
As of October 2026, benchmarks of the mainnet consensus code on 100 validators (dedicated AWS servers with emulated global latency) showed a median time to finality of 334 ms. At peak load, the network finalized 181 MB/s of transaction data (about 1 million simple token transfers per second) with median settlement under one second.
This repository contains the Espresso node, HotShot consensus, the data availability layer, the light client and its Ethereum contracts, and staking tooling.
See How Espresso Fits for an overview, and Architecture for implementation details.
In order for ZK rollups to rely on blocks produced by Espresso as a source of transactions, it is required to adjust the circuit that encodes the state update logic. See zk-rollups integration for more details.
- See doc/development.md.
(c) 2022 Espresso Systems espresso-network was developed by Espresso Systems. While we plan to adopt an open
source license, we have not yet selected one. As such, all rights are reserved for the time being. Please reach out to
us if you have thoughts on licensing.
DISCLAIMER: This software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind.
DISCLAIMER: The Rust library crates provided in this repository are intended primarily for use by the binary targets in this repository. We make no guarantees of public API stability. If you are building on these crates, reach out by opening an issue to discuss the APIs you need.
The smart contracts in contracts/ have been externally
audited. The node software, including HotShot consensus, has been
internally reviewed (see audits/) but not externally audited.
To report a vulnerability, see our security policy.