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Top 23 Rust virtual-machine Projects
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MicroVMs utilize Firecracker virtualization, a VM monitor built by AWS and written in Rust. Spinning a new VM with Firecracker takes only ~125ms on a cold start and ~28ms on warm start (from snapshot restoration). AWS has been using Firecracker for some time (in Lambda Functions themselves, Bedrock AgentCore, Aurora DSQL).
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kata-containers
Kata Containers is an open source project and community working to build a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs) that feel and perform like containers, but provide the workload isolation and security advantages of VMs. https://katacontainers.io/
Project mention: Kubelet Metrics: How cAdvisor and CRI Collect Kubernetes Stats | dev.to | 2026-05-20container-stats exporter to the Kata Containers
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Project mention: Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-04-17
Could it be made even faster using some of the ideas from https://github.com/zerobootdev/zeroboot ?
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Wasmi, the chosen runtime, has also been audited twice previously for blockchain use cases. Those audit reports are available publicly here: https://github.com/wasmi-labs/wasmi/tree/main/resources
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scaphandre
⚡ Energy consumption metrology agent. Let "scaph" dive and bring back the metrics that will help you make your systems and applications more sustainable !
Project mention: eBPF Tutorial: Energy Monitoring for Process-Level Power Analysis | dev.to | 2025-10-14Scaphandre Power Measurement: https://github.com/hubblo-org/scaphandre
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customasm
💻 An assembler for custom, user-defined instruction sets! https://hlorenzi.github.io/customasm/web/
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arcbox
Run AI agents on real and isolated machines — own kernel, filesystem, and network — with <200ms boot. Local first, OCI compatible, pure Rust.
Project mention: ArcBox: From-Scratch Container Runtime for macOS in Rust (Docker, K8s, MicroVMs) | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-07-20 -
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Project mention: Emuko: Fast RISC-V emulator written in Rust, boots Linux | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-27
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Project mention: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-07-22
Founder of stoffelmpc.com here.
Thank you vishakh82 for sharing.
It's great seeing folks apply PETs to key problems, no matter how theoretical they might seem now as evidenced by the comments. PoCs like this are steps in the right direction to make such work and ideas practical.
If any of you are looking to try out Stoffel, you can check out our docs at docs.stoffelmpc.com or go to our github repo: https://github.com/Stoffel-Labs/stoffel
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java-2-times-faster-than-c
An inquiry into nondogmatic software development. An experiment showing double performance of the code running on JVM comparing to equivalent native C code.
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nederlang
Nederlandse programmeertaal 🇳🇱. Geïnterpreteerd en met dynamische types. Met bytecode compiler en virtuele machine, in Rust.
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koiTerminal
Run Linux virtual machines on Android. A more permissive version of the Linux Terminal app, supporting custom virtual machine images. Forked from the GrapheneOS repo. Currently in proof-of-concept stage.
Project mention: GrapheneOS has been ported to Android 17 and official releases are coming soon | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-06-16Yep, I've used both. Desktop mode isn't exactly there yet, but hopefully with the general availability it will get with Android 17, it'll smoothen out. As for the Linux terminal I ended up sticking with a fork which provides a few extra features (https://github.com/outlawsanzhang/koiTerminal)
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Rust virtual-machine discussion
Rust virtual-machine related posts
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AWS Lambda MicroVMs
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Show HN: Clone, a small Rust VMM, forks VMs in under 20ms via CoW
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Firecracker Virtualization Overview
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Entropy for Clones
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Firecracker Entropy for VM Clones
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Show HN: Ephemeral VMs in 1 Microsecond
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RunCVM: An open-source Docker runtime for launching container images in VMs
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A note from our sponsor - SaaSHub
www.saashub.com | 10 Aug 2026
Index
What are some of the best open-source virtual-machine projects in Rust? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | firecracker | 35,893 |
| 2 | kata-containers | 8,503 |
| 3 | zeroboot | 2,416 |
| 4 | wasmi | 2,166 |
| 5 | scaphandre | 1,959 |
| 6 | customasm | 1,052 |
| 7 | miden-vm | 763 |
| 8 | uvm | 610 |
| 9 | starlight | 532 |
| 10 | ministark | 378 |
| 11 | loxcraft | 365 |
| 12 | aria | 337 |
| 13 | arcbox | 270 |
| 14 | hematita | 224 |
| 15 | LRVM | 104 |
| 16 | emuko | 102 |
| 17 | Laythe | 66 |
| 18 | stoffel | 65 |
| 19 | aluvm | 62 |
| 20 | wavm | 61 |
| 21 | java-2-times-faster-than-c | 52 |
| 22 | nederlang | 44 |
| 23 | koiTerminal | 37 |
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