while butting heads with @CryptoAspect on panic failures in zkVMs I received this <from panic attacks to full night's sleep> newsletter from @chargrysolle. i saw this as a divine calling to braindump my pov before implementing full night sleep. for any VM system that implements metering - and for any zkVM system that implements provable metering - panic is a (non) special case requiring no special treatment. sure, one can architect a system which safely handles panic w/o metering, but not the reverse - and since based (rollups or the superior) programs / vprogs necessitate provable metering, panic/abort is "solved" or correctly wrapped for free. as @Max143672 @CryptoAspect point out, SP1 as a single layer zkVM doesn't support (provable metering and doesn't support) panic handling - while this can be patched at the compiler level, this would guarantee safe abort of programs compiled using their toolchain only, whereas permissionless onchain registration of programs requires a more robust guarantee. the implied conclusion is that based (rollup or the superior) program systems can either use bespoke VMs such as Polygon's and Scroll's zkEVMs, or the slower and less performant nesting of general purpose VMs, which would enable runtime analysis of the guest program. but researching this I discovered a much neater alternative by @StarkWareLtd - the Sierra raw byte format, which iiuc achieves provable safety (and metering) via compile time static analysis. if true this is very very cool! cc @VolokhIlia tldr CairoVM>>SP1 -- this discussion is orthogonal or at least complementary to the based vprogs design, a zk variant of Solana's design - the link is somewhere on kaspanet's github - which insists on sync composability on the program layer while allowing programs to live and maintain their own state - their own mini zkVMs. vprogs optimize for dapp sovereignty, and will obviate the inherently parasitic L2 network/rollup entities which seek to lock and suck all dapp activity under their umbrella. hopefully kas builders will optimize for sovereignty too. cc @michaelsuttonil