SteemVM

SteemVM is an EVM-compatible Cosmos chain that brings the Steem blockchain's STEEM token onto a smart-contract platform.

Steem is a fast, fee-less social blockchain, but it has no virtual machine — you cannot write contracts against STEEM. SteemVM fixes that. STEEM sent to a gateway account on Steem is attested by SteemVM's validators and minted 1:1 as asteem, the chain's native gas and staking token. From there it behaves like any EVM-native asset: send it from MetaMask, use it in Solidity contracts, stake it, or bridge it back out to Steem.

Two things make SteemVM more than a generic bridge:

• Steem accounts are first-class. A name service links a Steem username (alice) to a chain address, verified by validator attestation and confirmed by the address owner. Contracts can resolve alice on-chain.
• Validators are accountable Steem participants. Anonymous validators cannot join: every validator must prove ownership of a Steem account and publish that account's public keys on-chain (see Validator identity).

Built on Cosmos SDK v0.54 + CometBFT, with cosmos/evm providing a full Ethereum execution layer (JSON-RPC, ERC-20, EIP-1559 fee market).

Chain facts

Cosmos chain ID	steemvm
EVM chain ID	8163
Address prefix	steem (e.g. steem1…, operators steemvaloper1…)
Native denom	asteem — 18 decimals, atto-denominated (1 STEEM = 10^18 asteem)
Key type	eth_secp256k1 at BIP44 coin type 60 — MetaMask-compatible
Block time	~6s (two Steem blocks)
Bridge threshold	more than 2/3 of bonded stake must attest

Because keys are eth_secp256k1 at coin type 60, one mnemonic yields the same account in the CLI and in MetaMask — the steem1… and 0x… forms are two views of the same 20 bytes. Bridged funds are visible in both without any ERC-20 wrapper.

Features

STEEM ↔ asteem bridge (x/oracle/bridge, on-chain store key steembridge) — bonded validators attest to STEEM transfers reaching the gateway account. Once attestations exceed the ⅔ threshold the chain mints asteem to the address named in the transfer memo. Bridging out burns asteem and records a withdrawal for validators to relay back to Steem. Voting power is recomputed live on every attestation, so the threshold is immune to validator-set drift.

Name service — a Steem user sends 0.001 STEEM with the memo svm-register <address> to link their username to that address. Validators attest it; the address owner then confirms, proving control. Re-linking is supported, and the registration fee is credited to the address so a brand-new account has gas to confirm with.

Validator identity — whenever the name service is enabled, a validator's moniker must be a registered, ACTIVE Steem username owned by that validator's own account, and its details field must carry the account's owner/active/posting public keys. This is enforced in the ante handler: create-validator and edit-validator are rejected otherwise, and the identity cannot be stripped after the fact.

Choice of oracle client — a separate container (never the chain binary itself) watches Steem and feeds both the bridge and the price feed. Point it at a Steem RPC endpoint and give it a key; when the validator is bonded it scans Steem's last irreversible block (no fork risk) and broadcasts attestations automatically. Attestations from bonded validators are fee-exempt. Pick whichever language you're comfortable operating — Go, Python, or JS, all functionally identical (see oracle/README.md).

EVM + precompiles — full Ethereum JSON-RPC (HTTP + WebSocket) for MetaMask, cast, ethers.js, and friends, plus a set of precompiled contracts exposing Cosmos SDK and chain-specific functionality to Solidity — see Precompiles below.

Precompiles

Precompiles are contracts at fixed addresses backed by Go code instead of EVM bytecode — they let Solidity call straight into Cosmos SDK modules (or this chain's own state) without a relayer or wrapper token. Every address below must be listed in evm.params.active_static_precompiles to be callable; all of them are active by default on a fresh SteemVM genesis (see cmd/steemvmd/cmd/init_genesis_defaults.go).

Standard cosmos/evm precompiles — shipped by the cosmos/evm dependency, identical on any chain built on it:

Address	Name	What it does
0x…0100	p256	Verifies secp256r1 (P-256) signatures on-chain — e.g. passkey/WebAuthn-style auth
0x…0400	bech32	Converts between steem1… (bech32) and 0x… (hex) address forms
0x…0800	staking	Delegate, undelegate, redelegate, and query staking state from Solidity
0x…0801	distribution	Claim/query staking rewards from Solidity
0x…0802	ics20	IBC fungible-token transfers initiated from Solidity
0x…0804	bank	Query and transfer any bank denom (not just asteem) from Solidity
0x…0805	gov	Submit governance proposals and vote from Solidity
0x…0806	slashing	Query slashing/signing-info and submit unjail from Solidity
0x…0807	ics02	Query IBC client/consensus state from Solidity

SteemVM-specific precompiles:

Address	Name	What it does
0x…0900	steembridge	Bridge + name service: confirmName, bridgeOut, resolveName, namesOf, awaitingRegistrationIds. Custom static precompile — see precompiles/steembridge/ISteemBridge.sol.
0x…0901	SBD (dynamic ERC-20)	Wraps the native asbd bank denom as a standard ERC-20 contract, so wallets/dApps can hold and transfer bridged SBD like any other token. Not hand-written — registered at genesis via cosmos/evm's x/erc20 "single token representation" mechanism (see app/register_sbd.go), the same pattern any future native-coin-to-ERC20 mapping on this chain would use.
0x…0902	oracledata	Read-only price-feed queries (the commit-reveal exchange rates from x/oracle/data). See precompiles/oracledata/IOracleData.sol.

asteem itself needs no precompile — as the chain's native EVM denom, eth_getBalance/native transfer/value already work on it directly, the same as ETH on Ethereum mainnet.

Running a node / becoming a validator

→ See Instructions/README.md.

That guide is the authoritative path and covers all three ways to run a node: the automated new-validator.sh script (recommended for most people), a manual Docker Compose walkthrough for anyone who wants control over each step, and building/running steemvmd from source without Docker. All three converge on the same validator-onboarding steps: creating a key, linking and confirming your Steem name, getting faucet coins, building validator.json, staking, and attesting transfers. The Instructions/ directory also holds the canonical node configuration (app.toml, config.toml, client.toml, genesis.json) that the Docker setup copies into the node home on every start.

The fastest way to get a node running is from the repository root:

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f steemvm

Bring up an oracle client alongside it — pick one language, never more than one at once — with docker compose --profile {go,python,js} up -d (see oracle/README.md).

Building from source

Requirements

• Go 1.25.10 or newer
• A C compiler, with CGO_ENABLED=1 — not optional. cosmos/evm's secp256k1 bindings are cgo-based, so a pure-Go build will fail. This also means the binary cannot be cross-compiled; build on the target platform. (The Docker image handles this for you.)

Build and install

make install

This runs go mod verify and installs steemvmd to $GOPATH/bin, stamping the version, commit, and app name via ldflags. Check it:

steemvmd version
steemvmd --help

Development

make test          # go vet + govulncheck + unit tests
make test-unit     # go test ./...
make test-race     # go test -race ./...
make test-cover    # coverage report -> coverage.html
make bench         # benchmarks
make lint          # golangci-lint
make lint-fix      # golangci-lint --fix

Regenerating protobuf code. Edit the .proto files under proto/, then generate and move the output into place (generated files land in a temporary steemvm/ tree):

go tool buf generate --template proto/buf.gen.gogo.yaml --path proto/steemvm/steembridge
cp steemvm/x/oracle/bridge/types/*.go x/oracle/bridge/types/
rm -rf steemvm

Never hand-edit *.pb.go — regenerate instead.

Repository layout

Path	What
app/	App wiring: depinject app config, plus manual EVM/IBC registration and the custom ante handler
cmd/steemvmd/	Node + CLI binary
x/oracle/bridge/	The bridge, name service, and validator-identity module (store key steembridge)
x/oracle/data/	Price-feed module (commit-reveal, weighted median)
x/oracle/	Parent unified slashing engine
x/steemvm/	Placeholder module
precompiles/steembridge/	Bridge EVM precompile (0x…0900) and its Solidity interface
precompiles/oracledata/	Price read precompile (0x…0902) and its Solidity interface
oracle/	Off-chain validator oracle clients (Go/Python/JS — pick one) and their shared protocol spec
proto/	Protobuf definitions (source of truth for *.pb.go)
Instructions/	Canonical node config, the validator guide, and the oracle CLI command reference
docs/	OpenAPI spec served by the node's API

CI runs unit tests and golangci-lint on every push, and lints PR titles.

Release

Push a tag with a v prefix; CI builds the release assets and creates a draft release:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

Release builds target linux/amd64 only — the platform node operators run. Because of the cgo requirement above, other targets need a native runner rather than cross-compilation.

Learn more

• Cosmos SDK docs
• cosmos/evm — the EVM execution layer
• CometBFT docs
• Steem developer docs