Aligned Monthly Recap - January '2026
As we close out January, we're excited to share a look at what the Aligned ecosystem has been working on over the past month. From a major mainnet launch to deep-dive articles on Ethereum and Ethrex, this recap captures the milestones and ideas driving our mission forward.
Below, you'll find announcements and articles that reflect our continued focus on performance, simplicity, and long-term impact across zero-knowledge infrastructure and Ethereum.
► Proof Aggregation Service: Mainnet Alpha Release
The biggest milestone of the month: Aligned's Proof Aggregation Service is now live on Ethereum Mainnet. From now on, our Rollup-as-a-Service clients will pay significantly less for L1 settlement.
The service enables multiple rollups to batch their zero-knowledge proofs together, reducing Ethereum verification costs while maintaining full L1 security. Instead of each rollup verifying proofs individually on-chain, the aggregation service combines them into a single aggregated proof submitted to Ethereum.
How it works:
- User Proof Aggregator: Batches approximately 256 user proofs per round, producing aggregated proofs with committed Merkle roots.
- Chunk Aggregator: Consolidates all chunk-level proofs into a single final proof, verifying each chunk's Merkle root integrity.
- The final aggregated proof costs approximately 300K gas, shared across the entire batch, representing a significant reduction compared to standalone proof verification.
This service currently supports:
- SP1 from SuccinctLabs
- Ethrex L2: Integrated
- Zisk: Integration in progress
- Our zkVM: Coming soon
The service operates on a prepaid subscription model. Users deposit ETH into a smart contract to receive daily proof quotas, then submit proofs through the Gateway for aggregation and on-chain posting.
► Articles
Ethrex: an L1/L2 execution client designed for Ethereum’s evolution
Inspired by Leandro Ferrigno's Ethproofs Day talk, this article explores Ethrex, the Rust-based Ethereum execution client built by LambdaClass and the foundation of Aligned's RaaS platform. Ethrex is built around a clear design philosophy: minimalism as a foundation for security and performance. The codebase is approximately one-third the size of other execution clients, with few traits and minimal macro usage, making it easier to read, audit, and maintain.
Ethrex runs in two modes: as a standard L1 execution client contributing to client diversity, and as a multi-prover ZK-rollup client supporting RISC-V zkVMs like ZisK and SP1, plus TEEs. The article explains why these properties are particularly well-suited for enterprise and institutional rollups, where auditability, reliability, and security matter as much as raw throughput. On top of Ethrex, Aligned adds the infrastructure teams need to launch a full L2: one-click rollup deployment, ZK verification layer and proof aggregation, meta-proving services, wallet-as-a-service, and interoperability tooling.
Based on our co-founder Federico Carrone's talk at Devconnect in Buenos Aires, this article explores what truly sets Ethereum apart. The key argument is that Ethereum is not "the world computer" — global cloud providers like AWS and Google already fill that role. Instead, Ethereum is the world's first verifiable computer, where every state transition and computation can be independently verified by anyone, with correctness enforced by cryptography and economic incentives rather than institutional authority.
The article covers how Ethereum enables internet-native property rights through cryptographic ownership, replacing platform-dependent digital ownership with assets that exist independently of intermediaries. It also explains how Ethereum's credible neutrality creates a unified economic layer where geography, citizenship, and institutional affiliation are irrelevant. Looking ahead, the piece outlines the hard problems of the next decade — performance, state growth, privacy, security tooling, and developer safety — and why Ethereum's long-term infrastructure mindset is what allowed it to outlast the speculative bubble.
As always, thank you for following our work and being part of the Aligned journey. January marked a major step with our Proof Aggregation Service going live on mainnet, and we're just getting started. More updates coming soon.
Stay tuned: X | 👾 Discord | 🌐 Website | 📺 Youtube | 📝 Roadmap
