Space and Time SXT
the ZK-proven database
🎭 sits in the stacks with a quill, answers your question, then stamps a sealed receipt so you never have to take its word for it
💬 “Ask me anything about the data and I'll answer fast. But you don't have to believe me, every answer leaves my desk with a sealed proof you can check in milliseconds. An archive is only worth keeping if it can prove it never lied.”
- The job: a network that runs SQL queries on real data, then proves the answer is correct on-chain with zero-knowledge cryptography.
- The trick: Proof of SQL, billed as the first ZK coprocessor for SQL, makes a sub-second proof a chain can verify in about 5 milliseconds.
- The dates: testnet launched Oct 30, 2024; mainnet and the SXT token launched May 8, 2025.
- The token: SXT pays for queries and verifiable compute. Supply is capped at 5 billion, never more.
📖 The Story
A blockchain has a stubborn blind spot: it can hold money safely, but it cannot cheaply look things up. Asking it to sift a big table of data is slow and expensive, and if a contract just trusts some outside server for the answer, the whole point of a trustless chain quietly leaks away. Space and Time was built around that exact gap.
Around 2022, founders Nate Holiday, Scott Dykstra, Jay White and Craig Holiday started the company with a plan that sounded almost too plain: make a database the blockchain can actually trust. Microsoft's venture fund M12 led a roughly $20 million round that September, and about $50 million came in total from backers including Framework, HashKey, Polygon and Avalanche's Blizzard fund.
The heart of it is Proof of SQL. You run your query off-chain, where it is fast and cheap, and the network hands back the answer with a tiny cryptographic receipt. That receipt is a zero-knowledge proof: a chain can check it in about 5 milliseconds and know the data was not tampered with and the math was done right. The team calls it the first ZK coprocessor for SQL.
On October 30, 2024, the SXT Chain testnet went live at Chainlink's SmartCon conference, with more than 30 validators running around the world. Then on May 8, 2025, the mainnet and the SXT token both launched, and the archivist opened its doors to the public.
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
It's a round trip, not a one-way pipe. A smart contract or an AI agent asks a question in SQL, the plain language databases use to look things up. Space and Time runs that query off-chain, where it is fast and cheap, and seals the answer with a Proof of SQL receipt. That same receipt is what comes back: the chain checks only the proof, in about 5 milliseconds, instead of re-running the whole query, and the verified answer lands right back with whoever asked. SXT Chain is a permissionless proof-of-stake-style network, so anyone can run a validator to keep it honest.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Solves a real, specific problem: bringing trustworthy database results to chains and AI agents, with a proof instead of a promise
- Proof of SQL is genuinely novel work, billed as the first ZK coprocessor for SQL, with sub-second proofs
- Strong backers and partners: Microsoft's M12 led the funding, and it plugs into Chainlink, Sui, ZKsync, plus Azure and Google BigQuery data
- Hard-capped at 5 billion SXT, so the supply cannot be inflated past that ceiling
- Very young. Mainnet only opened in May 2025, so its track record under real-world load is still short
- It's infrastructure, not a consumer app, the value depends on whether enough builders actually wire it into their products
- Roughly half the supply was still locked in mid-2025 and unlocks into about 2029, so steady new tokens can press on the price (investor and team tokens vest over four years)
- It competes in a crowded race of data and oracle projects, and ZK proving is a hard, fast-moving field
🧬 Evolution lineage
Standalone, no fork lineage. Space and Time is not a fork of another coin and not a sibling spun off from another chain, it runs its own SXT Chain. Its real family is the ZK verifiable-data and coprocessor crowd, the data plumbing that sits next to oracles, and it is closely tied to the Chainlink ecosystem.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Space and Time?
- It is a verifiable-data network. Smart contracts and AI agents ask it questions in SQL, the database-query language, and it runs them on real data off-chain. The answer comes back with a zero-knowledge proof, a tiny cryptographic receipt, so a blockchain can trust the result without redoing the work itself.
- What is Proof of SQL?
- Proof of SQL is the part that makes the receipt. Space and Time calls it the first ZK coprocessor for SQL: for each query it generates a proof in under a second, and the chain can check that proof in about 5 milliseconds. That check tells the chain nobody tampered with the data or the answer.
- Who is behind Space and Time?
- Founders Nate Holiday (CEO), Scott Dykstra (CTO), Jay White and Craig Holiday. Funding began around 2022, and Microsoft's venture fund M12 led a roughly $20M round that September, with about $50M raised in total from backers like Framework, HashKey, Polygon and Avalanche's Blizzard fund.
- How many SXT tokens exist?
- The supply is capped at 5 billion SXT, it never grows past that. Around 2.6 to 2.83 billion (about half) was circulating in mid-2025, and the rest unlocks slowly on a schedule running into about 2029. SXT pays for queries and verifiable compute, and is planned to govern the protocol. (Information only, not investment advice.)
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only