A system that is built, not merely designed
v4 specifies PYRAX as it is implemented today — one binary across four chainspecs, a faithful simulation on real primitives, with the production consensus path wired end-to-end and honest about what remains gated behind external audit.
Whitepaper downloads are temporarily paused while v4 is undergoing formal revisions. You can explore the system overview and section outline below.
PYRAX is a from-scratch, Rust-implemented Layer-1 organized around four properties most networks bolt on but PYRAX enforces as invariants: high throughput, privacy by default, full decentralization, and resistance to ISP-level surveillance. Consensus is a DAG ordered by GhostDAG, fed by a TriStream model — two proof-of-work families across four seal lanes plus proof-of-stake — and finalized by BLS-aggregated proof-of-stake BFT.
Value transfer is shielded by default with an Orchard-style note model and recursive zk-SNARKs that need no trusted setup. The peer layer is bootstrapless, traffic rides an onion Sphinx mixnet, execution scales through a multi-VM L2 (EVM, WASM, Cairo) and a recursive ZK-rollup L3, and the same idle GPUs that mine Stream B power PYRAX Compute, a verifiable on-chain-settled compute market.
Five north stars
Constraints, not aspirations — the foundation crates encode them so every later layer is built against them.
DAG, not a chain
A multi-parent DAG ordered by GhostDAG — honest parallel work is included, not orphaned.
Privacy by default
The default transaction hides sender, receiver, and amount with no-trusted-setup zk-SNARKs. Transparent is the exception.
No boot node
Peer discovery is bootstrapless — mDNS, Kademlia, peer exchange, and a signed seed list. No project server to join.
ISP-resistance
Traffic and services ride an onion Sphinx mixnet with fixed-size packets — an observer sees only uniform encrypted flows.
Open & verifiable
The protocol, consensus, ZK circuits, CLI, and SDK are Apache-2.0. A chain with secret rules is not trustless.
Two editions
The technical paper is the full specification. The plain-English edition explains the same system without the mathematics — start there if PYRAX is new to you.
- 01Design Goals — Five North Stars
- 02Architecture Overview
- 03Performance & Scalability
- 04Consensus: GhostDAG + TriStream + BLS PoS
- 05Privacy: Shielded by Default
- 06Execution: Multi-VM L2
- 07L3 — Recursive ZK Rollup
- 08Networking: Bootstrapless
- 09Metadata Privacy & Anonymous Services
- 10State, Storage & Proofs
- 11PYRAX Compute — Verifiable Market
- 12Crucible — Zero-Fee Mining
- 13NOVA — Autonomous Operations
- 14Tokenomics
- 15Governance & the DAO
- 16The Four Networks
- 17Wallet, Apps, CLI & SDK
- 18RPC Surface
- 19Cryptographic Primitives