LitVM announces Espresso integration for fast transaction finality

LitVM announced an integration with Espresso on 21 October 2026, according to a post from the official LitVM account on X. The post quoted co-founder Aztec Amaya, who posts as @circle_crypto: "We decided to integrate with Espresso because LitVM needs fast transaction finality. What's new is the scale. Espresso's capacity to handle one million transactions per second, all still finalized in under a second, means the base layer is the last thing we'll worry about when Hard Money Web3 fam show up en masse."

The announcement followed a post from Espresso on 20 October saying its mainnet can now handle up to 1 million transactions per second, with finality under a second at that peak load.

Why it matters

Espresso is the sequencing layer in LitVM's stack, described in LitVM's materials as a permissionless shared sequencer. The quote ties LitVM's choice of Espresso to finality speed and to capacity for a larger user base. LitVM did not say how many users it expects or when.

The figures come from Espresso's own benchmark write-up, and they describe Espresso's network, not LitVM's. According to Espresso:

• The upgrade behind the numbers was completed by the network's validators the week before its post.
• Average finality was 337 milliseconds under normal conditions and 778 milliseconds at a peak load of 1 million TPS.
• Data throughput was 181 MB/s, which Espresso equates to 1 million stablecoin transfers per second at an assumed average transfer size of 180 bytes.
• The benchmark ran on 100 nodes with emulated global network latency. Espresso said the nodes themselves ran in the same region.

Espresso also said that benchmark results depend heavily on test conditions.

These figures should not be read as LitVM's own finality. LitVM's documentation describes finality in minutes, reached through validity proofs generated by Succinct's SP1 zkVM over Arbitrum Nitro execution, in place of a seven-day challenge window. Espresso's sub-second numbers refer to ordering and data availability on its own network.

Espresso said it leaves execution entirely to the chains that integrate with it. Integrated chains choose their own virtual machine, fees, sequencer, and privacy and compliance rules, and the network is agnostic about whether they bridge to Ethereum, Solana, Litecoin or nowhere. For a deeper look at how the pieces fit together, see LitVM Architecture.

Background

Espresso said its mainnet launched in November 2024. It said it has run fully permissionless proof-of-stake consensus since early 2026, and that it has finalized more than 27 million blocks. It described two upgrades that cut finality from roughly 6–10 seconds at launch to 3 seconds with the proof-of-stake move, then to 337 milliseconds with a redesigned version of its HotShot consensus protocol in October 2026.

In the same post Espresso listed ApeChain as an integrated chain, with Celo, LitVM and MegaETH in the process of integrating. Its description of the company also names the Litecoin Foundation among the organizations that have chosen Espresso.

LitVM is Litecoin's EVM rollup, developed by ZK Innovations Inc. and endorsed by the Litecoin Foundation. Its stack combines Arbitrum Nitro for execution, Succinct SP1 for proving, Espresso for sequencing, BitcoinOS Grail for LTC bridging and Caldera for operations. Settlement is on Ethereum first and is planned to move to Litecoin later. For an overview, see What Is LitVM?.

The network currently running is the LiteForge testnet, live since April 2026. LitVM announced on 8 September 2026 that LiteForge had passed 300 million transactions. On 9 September, Amaya said testnet load was hitting infrastructure limits and that an upgrade was under way. Current network figures are on the LiteForge statistics page, and setup details are in the LiteForge testnet guide.

What's next

LitVM did not disclose a timeline for the Espresso integration, including whether it applies to LiteForge or to the later mainnet. Espresso's post describes LitVM as in the process of integrating. LitVM's materials say mainnet follows the token generation event and security audits. The status of that roadmap is tracked in When LitVM Mainnet Launches.