# Introduction to Zenith

Zenith bridges Urbit's Azimuth PKI from Ethereum to a sovereign Cosmos chain. It enables Galaxy and Star owners' economic participation in the network as operators with defined roles. Planets participate as users that submit transactions to their sponsoring Star. Zenith's unique combination of features enables 

## Background

### Urbit

[Urbit](https://urbit.org) is a decentralized computing platform with that empowers users with permanent personal servers. Each user owns a cryptographic identity called a "point", an ERC-721 token in the Azimuth registry on Ethereum. The Azimuth registry serves as the source of truth for point ownership, enabling cryptographic verification of identity claims without relying on external identity providers. **Reliance on Ethereum brings challenges and limitations to Urbit that are addressed by Zenith.**


Urbit points come in hierarchical classes (Galaxies, Stars, Planets) that form a sponsorship network. In Zenith, galaxies serve as validators while stars bundle transactions from planets. Planets are the exclusive transaction submitters on the network. See [Roles & Responsibilities](roles-responsibilities.md) for details on each participant type.

### The Cosmos SDK Foundation
Zenith is built on the [Cosmos SDK](https://cosmos.network/sdk), which provides a modular architecture for core features like token management, staking, and governance. It focuses on security, scalability, and ease of development, offering quick transaction finality with mature consensus mechanisms and seamless protocol upgrades without hard forks. The SDK also comes with extensive developer tools and strong community support.

Zenith leverages this flexibility and security to tailor a network specifically for Urbit's community, combining blockchain consensus with Urbit's unique identity system.


### Why Bridge Urbit and Blockchain?

Traditional blockchain governance often suffers from fundamental challenges including Sybil attacks where fake identities can manipulate governance, plutocratic governance where wealth concentration leads to power concentration, lack of meaningful and persistent identity verification systems, and low governance participation due to complexity or disengagement.

Zenith solves these problems by creating a unique bridge. Only verified Azimuth point owners can participate in governance, providing proven identity. The system maintains Azimuth-based cryptographic identity verification for decentralized identity, leverages existing Urbit sponsorship relationships to preserve social structure, and adds economic consequences to Urbit network participation for better alignment.

## Core Components

### zenithd

The main daemon contains four custom modules. The Onboarding Module manages participant enrollment and attestation validation (during the lockdrop). The Scry Oracle Module aggregates off-chain data using ABCI++ vote extensions. The Zenith Module tracks Azimuth point ownership and handles validator jailing and slashing. The Immutable Treasury Module manages $Z distribution and vesting.

### Janus

Named after the two-faced Roman god, Janus faces both directions: toward Urbit ships and toward the Zenith consensus layer.

**Architecture**: `Planet → Star → Galaxy`

Star nodes collect transactions from sponsored planets, bundle transactions and batch scry bindings, then submit directly to their sponsoring Galaxy.

### Scry Oracle

A decentralized oracle aggregates off-chain data from the Urbit network. Validators collect external data via vote extensions, including Ethereum heights, ownership changes, and scry bindings. Consensus aggregates and validates data before storing it on-chain, allowing applications to query this data through standard blockchain APIs.

### Azimuth Integration

Continuous monitoring of Azimuth point ownership occurs through the Azimuth Watcher, which tracks ownership changes in real-time, provides cryptographic proof of point ownership, and enables automatic validator jailing and slashing on point transfers.

## Participation Details

Zenith participation requires ownership of Azimuth points registered in the Ethereum Azimuth registry. Galaxy owners can become validators, while star owners participate as transaction bundlers. All participants must complete the lockdrop onboarding process and provide cryptographic attestations linking their Azimuth identity to their Zenith account.

The network maintains security through automatic jailing and slashing when validators transfer point ownership and progressive penalties if external data updates stall. See [Roles & Responsibilities](roles-responsibilities.md) for detailed requirements and [Lockdrop Onboarding](lockdrop-onboarding.md) for the participation process.


## Next Steps

Learn about the [Lockdrop Onboarding](lockdrop-onboarding.md) process, understand [Roles & Responsibilities](roles-responsibilities.md) in the network, and explore the [Network Stages](../documentation/network-stages.md) in detail.