FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
What is $NOCK?
$NOCK is the fungible L1 asset or coin issued by the Nockchain protocol. $NOCK features an immutable supply schedule, a hard cap on issuance, and a fair launch with no pre-mine.
$NOCK is a neutral store of value which scales as a medium of exchange to become more useful for application developers over time.
Unlike gas, $NOCK only pays for miner fees by transaction weight—there are no extra fees for onchain execution or making proofs. Transaction fees pay for on-chain storage, on-chain execution (which Nockchain keeps minimal), and temporary blob data storage.
A "nock" is one unit of $NOCK. A "nick" is a subdivision of a nock.
What is Nockchain?
Nockchain is a layer-1 blockchain powered by Zero-Knowledge Proof of Work (ZKPoW). Nockchain unlocks the power of cheap, provable Nock-based computation for the world. The Nock ZKVM is Turing-complete, achieves 121 bits of security over the Goldilocks field and is over an order of magnitude more efficient than general-purpose ZKVMs in the RISC-V family.
Nockchain is a blockchain that uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs to enable programmability and scalability, while remaining trustless and decentralized. Nockchain is not intended to support heavyweight on-chain execution of computation. This focus makes Nockchain a high-throughput chain for posting verifiable proofs and storing data.
What is Nockchain?What is Nock (or Nock ISA)?
Nock, or Nock ISA, is an instruction set architecture consisting of a lean 12 opcodes. This makes it straightforward for use in writing verifiable proofs. Furthermore, the Nock ISA-based ZKVM is over an order of magnitude more efficient than general-purpose ZKVMs in the RISC-V family, due in part to its minimalism.
Nock ISA is a solid-state interpreter and a functional programming paradigm. What this means to users is a stable, predictable system. Developers typically compose programs that target the Nock ISA using a higher-level language like Hoon or Jock.
Assimakis Kattis, Brian Klatt, Philip Quirk, Logan Allen. (2025). "A Framework for Compiling Custom Languages as Efficiently Verifiable Virtual Machines" (key concept: Nock as verifiable ZKP target)
What is Zero Knowledge Proof of Work/ZK-Proof of Work/ZKPoW?
Nockchain uses Zero Knowledge Proof of Work (ZKPoW) as its consensus mechanism for providing trustless settlement and ordering guarantees. ZK-Proof of Work is similar to Hashing-Proof of Work in that miners compete to try to run a puzzle computation repeatedly with different nonces until the hash of the output is less than a targeted number, colloquially referred to as the difficulty. Nockchain's parameters are similar to that of Nakamoto Consensus, with a 10 minute block time target, difficulty retargeting every 2 weeks, and an initial block size of 1MB.
In our initial implementation of ZK-Proof of Work, miners create a Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) of a fixed puzzle computation and then hash the ZKP.
ProofsHow do I download Nockchain?
The open-source mining code can be downloaded and installed from github.com/zorp-corp/nockchain.
How do I participate with the community?
What is Dumbnet?
The "dumbnet" is the first version of the Nockchain mainnet. It's rather minimal and only has features for simple spends of UTXOs, multisigs, and timelocks. Thus each block simply encodes some amount of monetary transactions.
Dumbnet will be upgraded along the technical roadmap into a fully programmable Nockchain experience.
Technical RoadmapHow do you define fair launch?
A fair-launch is a Proof-of-Work competition in which there is no pre-mine, and everyone can verify that mining started at a known time.
What is Zorp's relationship to Nockchain?
Zorp is a for-profit $NOCK treasury company. Zorp does protocol development and mining focused around the Nock ecosystem. Zorp developed the initial version of the Nockchain protocol.
This documentation is not investment advice. Zorp does not issue $NOCK, does not create a market in $NOCK, or guarantee that any such market will be made.
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