Equilibrium / Selected work / Ethereum Light Client on ICP

Ethereum Light Client on ICP

Ethereum light client running on the Internet Computer (ICP), a Helios port to an ICP canister for trustless, onchain verification of Ethereum state.

Completed
equilibriumco/ethereum-canister
Client DFINITY Foundation
Ecosystems Ethereum · ICP
Stack Rust
Delivered by Eiger (now Equilibrium)

Overview

Equilibrium built an Ethereum light client that runs on the Internet Computer (ICP), for the DFINITY Foundation, enabling canister smart contracts to trustlessly verify Ethereum state rather than relying solely on RPC providers. The work ports Helios, a Rust Ethereum light client, into an ICP canister, so any data fetched from Ethereum RPC providers is cryptographically verified onchain before being trusted.

Deliverables

  • Ethereum light-client canister for ICP (equilibriumco/ethereum-canister).
  • A Helios port adapted to the ICP canister (WASM) environment.
  • Trustless verification of Ethereum state and events for canister smart contracts.

Technical highlights

  • Built on Helios: Merkle proofs + sync committees (a randomly selected subset of validators signs recent block headers) verify Ethereum state and events efficiently, without downloading the full chain.
  • Adapted Helios for ICP canisters: upgraded to the Rust stable toolchain, removed Tokio and browser-oriented WASM dependencies, and replaced network libraries with ICP HTTPS outcalls.
  • The result is a trust-minimized Ethereum-to-ICP integration: canisters validate chain headers against proofs rather than trusting a centralized node.

Status

Completed (2023); public and open source at github.com/equilibriumco/ethereum-canister, with a write-up published jointly by Equilibrium and the DFINITY Foundation.