An EVM Layer 1 engineered for fast finality, near-zero network fees, and a developer toolkit that just works. Single-slot BFT finality, designed to avoid reorgs - a fast, clean highway, on a path to credible neutrality, for the next generation of on-chain applications, built on standards you already know.
Limonata is the highway, not the cars. We ship the core protocol, served cold: single-slot BFT finality, near-zero network fees, a fee split and self-refilling gas pool for gasless transactions, on-chain P-256 signatures, and a full EVM toolkit at Chain ID 10777. What you build on top is yours.
On most chains the user pays the gas and has to hold the native coin just to move. Limonata pays transaction gas from the chain itself - written into consensus, not bolted on with a relayer or a paymaster contract. Your users' balances are never reduced to pay for gas: the protocol covers it from the on-chain pool in the same block, so using the chain costs them nothing per transaction - up to a generous daily free-gas allowance (about 1 LIMO of gas a day, roughly 2,500 transactions, for every account that holds LIMO). The subsidy is bounded, not infinite: past that daily allowance the account funds its own gas. Two honest details: qualifying for the free allowance requires holding a little LIMO (a hold requirement that blocks farming - and that balance is never actually spent on sponsored gas), and a brand-new zero-balance account gets a one-shot starter grant so it can make its very first transactions. Fund an account once (faucet on testnet, a small purchase on mainnet) and its daily free gas keeps refilling.
Limonata runs an encrypted mempool. Your transaction goes in encrypted and is decrypted only after its place in the block is already locked - so a searcher bot cannot read it, reorder it, or sandwich it. This is anti-MEV written into consensus, not promised in a blog post, and it is live on the testnet today. And now it is fully trustless: the validators themselves generate the decryption key together on-chain, inside consensus, with no trusted party and no single copy of the master key. Decryption power is weighted by bonded stake, and if any one operator could decrypt alone the chain refuses the encryption rather than fake it.
Limonata is a base layer, not a product. Everything below is running on the testnet right now: a BFT consensus with single-slot finality, fees driven to near-zero, a fee market and gas sponsorship moved into the protocol, and modern signature cryptography on chain. This is what you build on.
CometBFT (Tendermint-class) byzantine fault-tolerant consensus produces blocks in well under a second. A committed block is final the instant it lands: no probabilistic confirmation wait, no reorg window to design around. Transactions settle immediately, deterministically, for every application on the chain.
The fee market runs at a base fee of 0.000000000000000001 LIMO and a minimum gas price of zero, so the effective network fee is currently 0. High-frequency on-chain actions (game moves, micro-transactions, agent loops) stay practically free instead of being priced out by gas.
A standard Ethereum JSON-RPC endpoint. MetaMask, Hardhat, Foundry, and Viem connect directly and your Solidity deploys unchanged. No rewrites, no proprietary SDK, no lock-in. The native gas coin is LIMO and the chain ID is 10777 (0x2a19).
The RIP-7212 secp256r1 (P-256) verification precompile is active at address 0x100. That is the same curve hardware passkeys and secure enclaves use, so contracts can verify device-grade signatures on chain today. It is the cryptographic foundation for the passkey work on the roadmap below.
A fast, neutral, BFT-final base layer with fees at zero. The chain runs cold.
Most chains ship a virtual machine and stop there, leaving fee policy and gas sponsorship to contracts and middleware. Limonata moves them into consensus, so the rules run in every block, the same way for everyone. All four below are live on the testnet now.
Every block, transaction fees are split at the protocol level in BeginBlock: 60 percent to validators through the standard proof-of-stake distribution module as compensation for securing the network, 20 percent burned, and 20 percent recycled into the on-chain gas pool that sponsors user fees. Deterministic, on every block, and live on the testnet now.
Burning fees is a fee-market mechanism; it implies nothing about token supply direction, scarcity, or price. The pooled portion funds gas sponsorship; it is not a revenue-share, not a holder benefit, and is not payable to or claimable by token holders.
A protocol-owned account acts as the universal sponsor for network fees. It is topped up two ways: the 20 percent fee recycle flows back every block, and if sponsored use ever outpaces that recycle, the protocol mints the shortfall back to the pool - but only up to a hard, chain-wide daily mint cap. So the subsidy does mint some LIMO, but the amount is bounded by design: net inflation is net-negligible at real usage and turns deflationary once apps self-fund their own gas. There is no withdraw path: it only pays gas.
A protocol mechanism for fee abstraction, not a fund, treasury, or anything claimable by holders. Testnet balances are valueless test tokens.
The flagship above, in mechanism. The ante handler decides per transaction whether the gas pool covers the EVM gas, then charges the pool instead of the sender and returns any unused-gas refund to the pool, never the user. Every account - user or app - gets the same daily protocol-paid allowance (about 1 LIMO/day), plus a one-shot starter grant if it is brand new; past the allowance the sender pays (apps via a developer-funded escrow), so fees still bound spam and a hard daily mint cap bounds the subsidy. No relayer, no ERC-4337 wrapper, no paymaster contract to deploy.
Limonata is an independent Cosmos-SDK Layer 1 with its own validator set and its own EVM, not a rollup settling to someone else's chain. Today it is team-operated: a single validator, team-set genesis, and gas-subsidy parameters (daily allowance, mint cap, fee split) set by the team (no on-chain governance yet). Progressively decentralizing those roles is on the roadmap; the full live-vs-roadmap status is in the how-it-works breakdown.
Fee policy and gas sponsorship are enforced in consensus, not in someone's contract.
An ante handler authorizes a Cosmos transaction with a WebAuthn passkey (P-256), built on the precompile above. It is now switched on on the testnet through a governance toggle so it can be tested in the open. It stays EXPERIMENTAL and is gated behind a mandatory cryptographic audit before any mainnet use; the toggle can be turned back off if the audit finds issues.
Transactions enter the mempool encrypted and are decrypted only once their order in the block is fixed, so they cannot be read early, reordered, front-run, or sandwiched - MEV resistance enforced in consensus, not left to a trusted relay. It is switched on on the testnet through a governance upgrade. It now runs a fully trustless design: the validators generate the decryption key together on-chain - a stake-weighted threshold DKG, no fixed keyper - with the master key never held in one place, and it auto-rekeys as stake shifts; it stays experimental on the testnet ahead of any mainnet use.
$LIMO is a network utility coin. The features marked "Live now" are running on the current testnet (limonata_10777-1), whose parameters are governance-set and subject to change; testnet tokens are valueless. The burn is a fee-market mechanism and implies nothing about token supply direction, scarcity, or price; the pooled fee portion is protocol economics that funds gas sponsorship, not an investment return, and is not payable to or claimable by holders. No holder or delegator earns a yield by holding LIMO. Any open-source reference apps the team published to prove the base layer are reference implementations only: the team does not operate them as a business, takes no fee, and earns no revenue from them, and they are wiped and redeployed at each testnet re-genesis. Experimental features (passkey signing, encrypted mempool) are provided as-is on the testnet for evaluation and are audit-gated before any mainnet use. Nothing here is an offer, sale, or promise of value. See the full technical disclaimer below.
Limonata is an open, permissionless canvas. The protocol stays neutral and stays out of your way - the applications are entirely yours to design, ship, and own. Custom DeFi primitive? A multiplayer game? A protocol nobody has tried yet? The base layer doesn't gatekeep.
Bring your Solidity contracts and your workflow. Hardhat, Foundry, Viem, MetaMask - all native. No rewrites, no proprietary SDK, no lock-in.
Point your stack at rpc.limonata.xyz and deploy. Public RPC, explorer, and faucet are live on testnet today.
Standard EVM stack, predictable gas, fast deterministic finality, and clean documentation - the tools you know, pointed at a faster chain.
Ecosystem decentralization is a shared effort. Community-directed grants support independent teams building open infrastructure and applications.
You own your product. Anything built on Limonata is built and operated by independent developers, responsible for their own applications, users, and outcomes. Limonata provides neutral infrastructure - it does not operate, endorse, or underwrite the applications others deploy.
Limonata is a BFT proof-of-stake chain, and a healthy network needs independent operators. You can run one without buying or holding LIMO. How it works: you self-fund a validator with a little LIMO from the free testnet faucet and run it - you are scored live on independence and reliability the moment you are bonded. Once you have a track record, apply and the foundation issues you a locked grant (the x/valgrant model, live on-chain) to a fresh wallet, which you delegate to your existing validator for voting power. The granted stake stays the foundation's property (clawback-able), so this is a technical service contributed to network operation, not an investment. The live validator set is shown below - see the how-it-works breakdown.
Spin up a Linux server, install limonatad, pull the genesis, peer to the network, and sync. A standard CometBFT full node - the same software securing the chain today.
Creating a validator needs only a dust self-bond of 1 aLIMO, which the testnet faucet hands out for free. You never purchase or custody LIMO to take part.
The team delegates network stake to your validator so it can sign blocks. That stake remains the team's property and can be undelegated at any time - you operate the node, you do not own the stake.
There is no staking inflation (the x/mint module is off), so validators are not paid to hold a coin. Instead they earn a share of network transaction fees plus their commission - compensation for operating a node, not a return on any investment or purchase. Fees are modest on the testnet today and grow with usage.
Running a validator is operating open-source infrastructure, not an investment. Validators earn a share of network transaction fees plus their commission as compensation for operating a node - payment for a service, not a return on any purchase or investment; the chain has no staking inflation (x/mint is off) and testnet fees are small. Stake delegated to your validator by the team remains the team's property and confers no ownership, claim, or interest to you. $LIMO is a network-utility coin and testnet tokens are valueless. Any Genesis-network recognition for sustained, reliable operation is separate, discretionary, and not a promised wage or return. Nothing here is an offer, sale, or promise of any asset or investment return.
Every app and game shipped on Limonata by independent developers. Browse them, like the ones you rate, and leave a comment. Building one yourself? Submit it below to get listed. Need funding to ship? Apply for a grant.
Submissions are not available to visitors in Canada, the United States, or China. Listing on the showcase is technical recognition only and is not an offer, sale, or promise of any asset, payment, or return.
138 days. One open testnet. Built in the open, by everyone. A technical marathon for builders and testers to ship, stress, and harden the network before Mainnet Genesis. This is not a sale.
Listing on the Showcase is technical recognition only. $LIMO is a network utility coin; nothing here is an offer, sale, or promise of any asset, payment, or return. Any Genesis network allocation, if one occurs, is a discretionary recognition of voluntary contributions, not compensation.