There are many different ways to build a Sovereign Rollup on Nomos. In this tutorial, we’ll focus on just one example: a Zero Knowledge (ZK) rollup that is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The tutorial is based on a proof of concept Sovereign Rollup developed by the Nomos team in 2025, the complete code for which can be found here:

GitHub - logos-co/nomos-example-sovereign-rollup: EVM-based Nomos Sovereign Rollup

It is also helpful to refer to the Nomos node repository for details about Nomos packages used in this example. Each step in the tutorial will highlight relevant files from the Nomos repository to provide additional context.

Overview

The Sovereign ZK Rollup in this tutorial consists of three main components. Each component serves an independent role in the protocol, and together they interact with Nomos to keep the rollup running correctly. These components are:

  1. Sequencer: An execution node that processes transactions and submits blocks to Nomos.
  2. Prover: Generates zero knowledge proofs for block execution, ensuring the correctness of state transitions.
  3. Light Node: Verifies proofs and block data, enabling trustless verification of the rollup state.

To execute transactions, our Sovereign Rollup will proceed as follows:

  1. Users submit transactions to the sequencer.
  2. The sequencer batches transactions together and sends the batched data to Nomos. It also sends these data to the prover.
  3. The prover generates ZK proofs to demonstrate the correctness of the transactions in the sequencer’s batch.
  4. Light nodes fetch block data from the sequencer and proofs from the prover, which they then verify.
  5. Light nodes use sampling techniques to check the availability of the data on NomosDA (Nomos’ data availability service).

This model is similar to the Sovereign ZK Rollup described in the Introduction, except that here the sequencer and prover roles are conceptually separated.

A Sovereign ZK Rollup on Nomos with sequencer and prover roles handled by the same party.

A Sovereign ZK Rollup on Nomos with sequencer and prover roles handled by the same party.

To make things simpler, the Sovereign Rollup you’ll be building will use Zeth as a ready-made way to generate proofs for EVM blocks. However, you’ll still need to implement some additional functionality for all three components. This tutorial will lead you through the steps necessary to build a functional Sovereign ZK Rollup. These steps are listed below:

Getting Started

Building a Sequencer

Building a Prover