In Brief:
- NEXUS announced that CertiK has come aboard ONEchain as a network validator, running its own node infrastructure on Mainnet 2.0.
- December brought an MOU between the pair spanning security, auditing and infrastructure; a standalone validator participation agreement followed in May.
- The validator set CertiK now belongs to also counts NEXUS, ONEstore, H Lab, OnchainLabs and RaidLabs among its members.
Blocks on ONEchain now carry CertiK’s signature. In a Sept. 3 announcement, NEXUS said the security firm had entered the network’s validator set and would build and operate node infrastructure of its own, taking on block creation, transaction verification and network maintenance across ONEchain Mainnet 2.0.
What changed here is the role, not the client list. CertiK used to inspect ONEchain’s code from the outside. These days it helps keep that same chain running.
An auditor's job used to end when the report shipped.
@CertiK now signs blocks on a chain that cleared 𝟱.𝟳𝟮𝗠 transactions in August.@ONEView on X ↗
What CertiK actually runs
Proof of staked authority underpins Mainnet 2.0, which carries the name “Breakpoint.” Blocks come from designated validators that have satisfied self-staking thresholds and keep their nodes online without interruption. A governance vote passed with roughly 98% approval ahead of the June 1 launch, which shipped with a 21-validator set.
That design burns base fees permanently, while a reward pool of 300 million tokens for the first year is divided between validators and delegated staking. On the technical side, the chain offers a full EVM stack at Cancun/Prague alongside PoSA and BLS signatures, and NEXUS markets it toward games, DeFi and AI agents.
According to ONEchain, August saw 5.72 million transactions settle on the network.
The paperwork came first
A memorandum of understanding between NEXUS and CertiK, covering security, auditing and infrastructure, was signed back in December. May brought a validator participation agreement. Come June, CertiK carried out an AI Skill security scan of ONEchain Skills, which at that point still went by CROSS Skills.
“CertiK’s participation as a validator goes beyond a simple security audit agreement, and it is evidence that ONEchain is growing into a network that global institutions trust and take part in directly,” said Henry Chang, CEO of NEXUS.
Who else signs blocks
As things stand, the lineup consists of CertiK, NEXUS, ONEstore, H Lab, OnchainLabs and RaidLabs. Chang operates a validator personally as well.
July 15 marked ONEstore’s arrival. A month earlier, in June, NEXUS had picked up an 89.03% stake in the Korean app market for about 62.6 billion won — roughly $40.74 million — and the store reaches upward of 38 million devices. An “AI Games” section devoted to titles produced with AI tools opened there on Aug. 7, launching with 20 games including Ragnarok Breaker and Heros Unite.
Infrastructure and platform operators joined the set before a security specialist did, in NEXUS’s sequencing. The company says further expansion of the composition is planned.
Background
CROSS was renamed ONEchain and $CROSS became $ONE, a ticker change that kicked in Sept. 4 at 00:00 UTC. No migration took place and no new asset appeared. Neither the validator set nor supply was affected. The ecosystem’s designated common unit is $ONEUSD, which acts as the medium of exchange, while ONE takes the store-of-value role.
Cumulative ONEpocket wallets stood at 2.18 million as of July 2026, per NEXUS. The company describes on-chain transactions as growing steadily since the 2025 network launch, although its published platform metrics are stamped with a preliminary internal estimate date of July 31, 2026.
Validator seats elsewhere have been piling up for CertiK. June 25 saw it become an institutional masternode validator on XDC Network, deploying and running nodes via SkyNode, its enterprise infrastructure platform.
Chang indicated NEXUS isn’t finished: “We will continue to expand our validator set with proven global partners.”