UI refinements, prover upgrades, and a new status page
This issue of changelog contains focused upgrades across the Nexus stack — from refined navigation in Nexus OS to critical performance gains in the zkVM.
A redesigned top navigation layout on desktop simplifies how users move through Nexus OS, while new Gridcrew recruitment videos bring personality and team spirit to the selection experience. On the backend, a new public status page improves visibility during network slowdowns or infrastructure maintenance.
Meanwhile, zkVM v0.3.5 lands with a suite of performance and correctness improvements, including full RISC-V M extension support, major upgrades to the prover architecture, and SDK improvements for developers working with proofs and guest programs.
Nexus OS
The Nexus OS desktop experience has been refreshed with a new top navigation bar, replacing the left sidebar layout. This design paves the way for new feature integrations, improves discoverability, and streamlines how users navigate key proving and network tools. A new “More” dropdown menu consolidates outbound links to Nexus Explorer, Docs, social channels, and legal pages — providing a cleaner and more organized interface.
To better understand community needs, a survey banner is now displayed across major OS views. This short survey will be closing soon, and feedback is already informing near-term product priorities.
Gridcrew team selection has also been updated. Teams can now feature “meet the team” recruitment videos to showcase their crew’s culture and values directly within the selection flow at gridcrew.nexus.xyz.
Nexus now has a dedicated status page at status.nexus.xyz, providing real-time updates during periods of degraded performance or backend downtime. This update improves transparency and supports clearer communication with the community when services are under load.
The zkVM receives its most extensive set of upgrades yet in version 0.3.5, with improvements to the proving engine, instruction support, and SDK tooling. At the core of this release is full RISC-V M extension support, enabling correct and performant proving for multiplication, division, and remainder operations.
The Prover2 architecture has been enhanced with better memory handling, range checking, and support for jump instructions.
Performance optimizations target both runtime and circuit generation — reducing redundant computation and improving efficiency for power-of-2 math, bitwise operations, and memory trace management.
The SDK also received quality-of-life improvements, including reusable input encoding helpers and better cross-platform path handling. Several critical bug fixes ensure better instruction decoding and safer memory access.
Updates in v0.3.5 include:
Full RISC-V M extension support (MUL, DIV, REM, and related operations)
Prover2 memory improvements with read-write constraints, trace verification, and address uniqueness
Range check optimizations with range256 and in-pairs lookups
Refactored bitwise traces and power-of-2 math using bit shifts
New components for JAL and JALR instructions with alignment checks
SDK input encoding helpers to reduce code duplication
Opcode classification and J-type immediate display fixes
And memory access safety improvements with cross-platform path compatibility
The Nexus Roadmap
This release reflects the dual priorities at the heart of the Nexus roadmap: performance and usability. From foundational improvements in the zkVM to a better organized interface in Nexus OS, the system continues to mature across every layer.
Ryan Crowe
Nexus
