Why do Pantera and other top venture capital firms bet on Altius? Revealing how the modular execution layer can break the performance bottleneck of blockchain

Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher

On February 18, the crypto startup Altius announced that it had completed a $11 million financing round, led by Founders Fund and Pantera Capital. It is worth noting that the official X account of Altius released its first post two days before the announcement of the financing (on February 16), followed by the announcement of the massive financing of tens of millions of dollars, which undoubtedly added a bit of mystery to it.

With tens of millions of dollars in funding and backing from renowned venture capital firms such as Pantera Capital, what is so unique about the Altius startup?

Altius is not a single public chain project in the traditional sense. It is committed to reshaping the execution layer. Through an innovative modular design, it separates the execution layer of the blockchain and creates a plug-and-play "central kitchen-style" execution layer solution, which can be seamlessly connected with any public chain that adopts the VM mechanism, thereby significantly improving the performance of the blockchain network.

Founded by former Amber Group executives, it has raised $11 million

The composition of the Altius project team members is particularly eye-catching. Its co-founder and CEO Annabelle Huang was not only the managing partner of the well-known market maker Amber Group, but also served as the growth director of Airswap, with rich market insight and operational experience; while co-founder and CTO Anit Chakraborty worked as a software engineer at quantitative trading Hudson River Trading for 15 years and is well versed in trading technology; in addition, growth director Ivan Paskar is the former senior marketing director of Binance. The deep background and influence of these three core members in the crypto market have given Altius a halo since its birth.

On February 18, Altius announced that it had successfully completed $11 million in financing in the pre-seed stage through flexible methods such as equity or token rights. This round of financing was jointly led by two well-known investment institutions, Founders Fund and Pantera Capital, and attracted participation from heavyweight investors such as Archetype, DCG, No Limit Holdings and Amber Group. In addition, angel investors from multiple projects such as Berachain, Movement, Ethena Labs, Ritual, Solana Foundation and Hudson River Trading participated.

It is worth noting that Amber Group and Hudson River Trading are not only the background sources of Altius’ founding team, but also the investors in this round of RON. The dual identities undoubtedly increase the natural popularity of Altius’ expansion.

Building a “plug-and-play” modular execution layer stack Altius Stack

Altius is not limited to a single blockchain network, but is a scalable execution layer solution dedicated to improving the performance of existing networks . It is developing a high-performance execution layer that is independent of the virtual machine (VM). The execution layer is highly compatible and can support multiple virtual machine environments such as EVM to MoveVM, CosmWasm, SolanaVM, etc.

Looking back at the development of the blockchain ecosystem, we have witnessed a shift from a single-chain, monolithic architecture to a modular design and multi-chain ecosystem. However, the current crypto market still has problems such as network congestion, dispersed liquidity, and complex cross-chain operations that need to be addressed. In particular, the current blockchain still uses a sequential execution mode when processing transactions, which leads to increased network congestion, soaring GAS fees, slower transaction speeds, and extremely poor user experience during high-demand events (such as token issuance or NFT casting).

"How to improve the efficiency of the execution layer?" has always been the focus of exploration in the crypto industry. Last year, the rise of parallel EVM concepts such as Monad and Sei was an innovation in improving the performance of traditional EVM. It is hoped that through parallel transactions, multiple non-conflicting transactions can be processed at the same time to improve the speed of the execution layer.

Altius is also a startup crypto company that focuses on improving the performance of the execution layer. On February 18, it made its debut with a $1,100 financing announcement. So, how exactly does Altius improve the performance of the execution layer?

Altius separates the execution layer from a single blockchain network in a modular way to create a "plug-and-play" modular execution layer stack, Altius Stack, which has parallel processing capabilities, supports cross-chain operations, and can be easily integrated with any VM network.

Based on the concept of modularization, the functions of a single-architecture blockchain network can be finely divided into different levels, such as the consensus layer, data availability layer (DA), settlement layer, and transaction execution layer. These modules can be assigned to different chains for processing, that is, professional matters are handed over to professionals, rather than a single chain carrying all tasks, thereby improving efficiency. For example, the data layer of the previously popular modular public chain Celestia (TIA) focuses on data storage and verification.

The modular execution layer designed by Altius focuses on improving the execution efficiency of smart contract logic . The Altius Stack execution layer stack toolkit it created, with its powerful parallel processing and cross-chain connection capabilities, enhances blockchain performance while also having strong scalability, supports plug-and-play, and can be seamlessly integrated into Layer1, Layer2, and various VM chains.

Altius Stack is like the "central kitchen" of the execution layer. Developers can efficiently outsource tedious execution layer tasks, freeing them from complex execution layer design and focusing on the research and development and innovation of other core functions of the network.

This innovative model greatly reduces the burden on developers, allowing them to devote their precious time and energy to deepening protocol functions and fine-tuning applications, thereby promoting the prosperity and development of the blockchain ecosystem.

Altius Stack will be available in Q4

Currently, the specific products of Altius have not yet been released. According to the official roadmap of Altius, its Altius Stack execution layer stack is expected to achieve the integration of Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks compatible with EVM in the first quarter (Q1) of this year; the compatibility will be extended to multiple virtual machines in the second quarter (Q2); and the shared execution layer Altius Stack will be launched in the fourth quarter (Q4).

It is worth noting that the modular execution layer is not the original creation of Altius. A similar concept is also reflected in the Fuel project. Fuel is a modular execution layer tailored for the Ethereum Rollup ecosystem. The FuelVM architecture introduced in its V2 version is a universal execution stack that supports integration with any chain.