In our first live Discord AMA, Nexus VP of Engineering Diego Prats joined the community to share the latest from the engineering frontlines — covering everything from testnet improvements to the global activity map and the future of developer experience. Here's a recap of the most important takeaways, straight from the source.
Listen to the full AMA:
An audio recording of the Nexus Discord AMA with Diego Prats, VP of Engineering. Recorded 5/7/25
Scaling with confidence: Preparing for Testnet III
With each new testnet cycle, Nexus is seeing exponential growth in activity — sometimes up to 30x previous demand. Diego emphasized that this surge is a strong signal of traction, but also a challenge the team is taking seriously. Much of the recent CLI-related downtime, for example, was actually caused by backend infrastructure strain, not the CLI itself.
In response, the engineering team has undertaken a full-scale overhaul to harden backend systems, laying the groundwork for a more resilient and scalable infrastructure ahead of Testnet III. “This time we’re preparing even more than last time,” Diego said, “because every two to three months, the demand curve shifts dramatically.”
A global map
On the product side, Nexus OS continues to evolve through what Diego calls “a thousand paper cuts.” The team is fixing small UX blockers, responding to screenshots posted by users on Discord and X, and iteratively improving the interface.
One standout update is the new global activity map, now visible on the Nexus OS dashboard. This feature was inspired by user feedback that the network’s scale wasn’t immediately obvious. “We wanted the app to reflect how global this really is,” Diego explained.
Laying the rails for social integration
Another new feature, still early in its lifecycle, is the ability to link your X account to your Nexus OS profile. The new functionality is a signal of things to come: “We're laying the groundwork,” Diego noted, pointing toward future collaborative and social primitives.
zkVM 3.0: Faster, safer, smarter
The launch of zkVM 3.0 marks a major milestone. The new version introduces StarkWare's Stwo prover, a robust proof system with better error handling, improved memory safety, and significantly faster arithmetic operations. As Diego put it, “It’s smoother, faster, and more robust — exactly what we want as the network matures.”
He also underscored the modular design of Nexus’s zkVM. By keeping the architecture flexible, Nexus can integrate cutting-edge zk technologies as they emerge — like the Stwo prover — without requiring a full rewrite. “We want to go with the wave of zk advances,” he said.
Rethinking docs for the AI era
Diego was candid about the current state of developer documentation: “I’m not satisfied with it.” But he also shared a bold vision for what comes next.
In his view, modern dev experience isn't just about better-written docs — it's about optimizing for the way developers now learn and build: through AI interfaces.
Whether it's the embedded agent on docs.nexus.xyz or external models like ChatGPT or Claude, Nexus is working to ensure its documentation can fuel real-time conversations, not just static reading. “Ask the AI agent like you’d ask anything else — and if the answer isn’t good, tell us.”
A unified Nexus experience
Looking ahead, the engineering team is focused on tightening the integration across Nexus OS, the Nexus Layer 1, and the zkVM. While each piece is powerful in isolation, Diego acknowledged that the experience can feel fragmented. “That’s valid feedback,” he said. “We’re working to make it seamless.”
Soon, users will be able to contribute compute directly through the web app, earn rewards onchain, and leverage zkVM under the hood — all without leaving the Nexus OS interface.
Diego closed with a note of gratitude for the community: “Even the bugs, even the criticism — it all means someone’s using it, and that drives us.”
Whether you’re filing issues, sharing screenshots, or asking how to launch a dApp, your input is shaping the future of Nexus.
Stay tuned for more live sessions and product updates, and keep the feedback coming via Discord. As Diego put it: we’d rather hear a bug report than silence.