ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs Article Swipe

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Guangxian Zou , Isaac Zhang , Ryan Zarick , K.W. Wong , Thomas Kim , Daniel R. Wong , Saeid Yazdinejad , Dan Boneh ·

YOU? · · 2025 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2512.09300

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.

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Type: preprint
Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09300
OA Status: green
OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4417290298

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OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4417290298

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2512.09300

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Title: ZeroOS: A Universal Modular Library OS for zkVMs

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Type: preprint

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Publication year: 2025

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Publication date: 2025-12-10

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Authors: Guangxian Zou, Isaac Zhang, Ryan Zarick, K.W. Wong, Thomas Kim, Daniel R. Wong, Saeid Yazdinejad, Dan Boneh

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09300

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PDF URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09300

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Open access: Yes

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OA status: green

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OA URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09300

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Cited by: 0

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