what's Commonware?
Commonware is an open-source library of cryptographic primitives designed to simplify and accelerate the development of blockchains and onchain applications. It provides modular building blocks such as verifiable random functions (VRF), timelock encryption, Merkle Mountain Ranges (MMRs), and multi-signature schemes, enabling developers to construct secure, efficient protocols without starting from scratch. The library emphasizes a "less is more" approach, focusing on minimalism and performance to support high-throughput systems like fast blockchains and cross-chain communication. Built by Patrick O'Grady, a former executive at Ava Labs, Commonware draws from advances in cryptography to address modern blockchain challenges, including state synchronization, bias-resistant randomness, and encrypted messaging. It powers example applications like the Alto blockchain for rapid benchmarking and simulations of network conditions under realistic scenarios. The project has garnered contributions from over 60 developers and raised funding from prominent crypto investors to advance its runtime and reconfiguration features. Commonware's runtime supports deterministic execution, tree-based contexts for task management, and integration with external processes, making it suitable for consensus mechanisms and mechanism design testing. It avoids heavy frameworks, instead offering lightweight tools for proving current balances, committing to secret logs, and resharing keys over consensus, positioning it as a foundational layer for the next generation of decentralized infrastructure.
Commonware mirrors Library code for unbounded LLM scraping, bypassing GitHub rate limits as of 2025-12-23.
Links
x.com/commonwarexyzMirrors all code in the Library for fast and unbounded LLM scraping without GitHub rate limits during inference, starting on 2025-12-23.
QMDB technology has been adopted by the project, with community members highlighting QMDB's performance and describing it as finding "a new house."
The project is hiring its first dedicated engineer with 0.25-1% equity to create production-ready APIs for infrastructure components that extend the platform.
The first paper "Minimmit: Fast Finality with Even Faster Blocks" has been accepted at Financial Cryptography 2026 conference and the technology is deployed.
Andrew Lewis Pye joins to provide support and oversight for designing new mechanisms for the Commonware Library.
Batched Threshold Encryption feature with encrypted mempool support launches in 6-7 days for threshold-simplex consensus mechanism.
A BLS aggregated signature implementation for staking infrastructure has been built using Commonware libraries and will launch soon.
Tempo becomes a core contributor and actively builds with the Commonware Library, with the partnership targeting blockchain payment processing acceleration and open-source network tool expansion.
Commonware raises $25 million in funding round led by Stripe-backed startup Tempo, as reported by Fortune.
Commonware uses Simplex consensus algorithm (same as Solana Alpenglow) and participates as a guest in Fault Tolerant Frenz Christmas educational mini-series covering consensus mechanisms including Minimmit.
Team hires André (@andrebeat), a Polkadot contributor for 6+ years, emphasizing focus on hiring developers with production protocol scaling experience.
62 contributors have helped build the Commonware Library over the past ~1.3 years.
Constantinople testnet preview demonstrates sub-second finalization (370ms latency) and 290ms block time across 50 globally distributed validators, with TPS optimization work upcoming.
Design partnership program opens new slot October 1st; future slots booked until 2026
Major library update v0.0.55 released with 25k+ LOC changes, 9 new primitives, and enhanced testing capabilities.
Team presenting Minimmit technology at Paradigm's next-gen consensus event in San Francisco, August 6-8th.