Education
What is Lita?
Mar 25, 2025
TL;DR: At Lita, we do two things:
1. Lita Engineering: Building Valida, a custom ISA zkVM and it's compiler toolchain.
2. Lita Studios: Developing consumer products that leverage our zkVM stack
A Zero Knowledge Paradigm
At the heart of our work lies a guiding belief: the zero-knowledge paradigm requires a new computing standard. While most zkVMs retrofit existing instruction sets, we argue traditional ISAs - designed before ZK's requirements were understood - create inherent bottlenecks in both performance and flexibility.
This radical approach necessitated building our own ISA and compiler infrastructure from the ground up—a significant engineering investment. After two years of development, we can see this trade-off starting to get paid off, with Valida's toolchain now delivering support for Rust, C, and WASM, while block proving capabilities are on the horizon.
(1) Lita Engineering: Building the Valida zkVM Stack
Our team brings together computer scientists, cryptography researchers, and compiler engineers with a shared mission: to create the foundational infrastructure for verifiable computation.
Core Technologies we are building and maintaining:
- Valida: A custom ISA zkVM designed for ZKP efficiency.
- Compiler Toolchain: Supports Rust, C, and WASM (with more languages coming soon).
- Plonky3 Proving System (by Polygon).
Beyond our core zkVM stack, we're developing complementary features that expand Valida's capabilities. For example, domain-specific optimizations like our Keccak Acceleration Chip and support for client side proving and verification.
Our main focus now is real time block proving with the Valida zkVM, including all necessary system components and performance optimizations. In parallel, we're expanding our compiler support to additional programming languages.
If you are interested to learn more in depth about our tech stack, we recommend reading our Zero Knowledge Paradigm series that provides more information on zkVM fundamentals, design decisions, and our architectural rationale.
(2) Lita Studios: Beyond Infrastructure
After two years of foundational work, we recognized a critical need: infrastructure alone cannot drive adoption and cultivate mindshare.
Lita Studios is a collaborative developer hub where Lita Engineering and external contributors come together to push the boundaries of what’s possible to build on the Valida zkVM. By combining our technical expertise with the creativity and vision of the broader community, we are excited to introduce interesting use cases of ZK in payments, gaming, AI and more.
What we are currently building and experimenting with:
- Cat Runner: Our implementation of Chrone’s T–Rex Runner ensures cheat-free gameplay by leveraging the Valida zkVM to prove the game state in the Rust backend.
- Lita Pay: Trustless onramping leveraging the Valida zkVM stack.
- Taste: Discovery platform that aggregates taste data from off-chain sources across multiple platforms using zkTLS and Valida to deliver personalized recommendations.
- ReVa: A minimal implementation of ZKPs of EVM block execution using Reth. Supports both Ethereum and OP Stack.
Check out cryptographically responsible products and early versions of our merchandise at Lita Studios.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
With Valida’s zkVM stack, we’ve built the foundation—but we see this as just the beginning. Lita Studios represents our next leap: a collaborative space where developers, researchers, and innovators can experiment, build, and redefine what’s possible with zero-knowledge technology.