Author: Xiyou, ChainCatcher

On February 18, the crypto startup Altius announced that it has completed a $11 million funding round, led jointly by Founders Fund and Pantera Capital. Notably, Altius's official X account posted its first content just two days before the funding announcement (February 16), followed by the news of the significant funding, which undoubtedly adds a layer of mystery to the project.

With the support of $11 million in funding and backing from well-known venture capital firms like Pantera Capital, what makes the Altius startup unique?

Altius is not a traditional single public chain project; it is committed to reshaping the execution layer by independently modularizing it through an innovative design, creating a plug-and-play "central kitchen" execution layer solution, allowing it to seamlessly connect with any public chain that uses a VM mechanism, thereby significantly enhancing the performance of blockchain networks.

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

The composition of the Altius project team is particularly noteworthy. Co-founder and CEO Annabelle Huang was not only a managing partner at the well-known market maker Amber Group but also served as the growth director at Airswap, possessing rich market insights and operational experience; co-founder and CTO Anit Chakraborty has been a software engineer at quantitative trading firm Hudson River Trading for 15 years, well-versed in trading technology; additionally, growth director Ivan Paskar was a former senior marketing executive at Binance. The deep backgrounds and influence of these three core members in the crypto market give Altius an inherent advantage from its inception.

On February 18, Altius announced that it successfully completed a $11 million funding round in the Pre-Seed stage through flexible means such as equity or token rights. This round was co-led by the two well-known investment firms Founders Fund and Pantera Capital, while also attracting heavyweight investors like Archetype, DCG, No Limit Holdings, and Amber Group. Additionally, angel investors from multiple projects including 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 sources of the founding team background for Altius but also investors in this funding round, which undoubtedly adds natural visibility to Altius's expansion.

Creating 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 aimed at enhancing the performance of existing networks. It is developing a high-performance execution layer that is VM-agnostic, highly compatible, and capable of supporting various virtual machine environments from EVM to MoveVM, CosmWasm, SolanaVM, etc.

Looking back at the development of the blockchain ecosystem, we have witnessed a shift from single-chain, monolithic architectures to modular designs and multi-chain ecosystems coexisting. However, the current crypto market still faces issues such as network congestion, fragmented liquidity, and complex cross-chain operations that need to be addressed. Especially since current blockchains still use sequential execution models for transaction processing, leading to increased network congestion, soaring GAS fees, slowed transaction speeds, and poor user experiences during high-demand events (such as token launches or NFT minting).

"How to improve the efficiency of the execution layer?" has always been a key focus of exploration in the crypto industry. Last year, the rise of parallel EVM concepts like Monad and Sei represented innovations aimed at improving traditional EVM performance, hoping to enhance execution layer speed by processing multiple non-conflicting transactions simultaneously.

Altius is also a startup focused on enhancing execution layer performance, and on February 18, it made its debut with the $11 million funding announcement. So, how does Altius improve execution layer performance?

Altius separates the execution layer from a single blockchain network through a modular approach, creating a "plug-and-play" modular execution layer stack called Altius Stack, which has parallel processing capabilities, supports cross-chain operations, and can easily integrate with any VM network.

Based on the modular concept, the various functions within a single-architecture blockchain network can be finely divided into different layers, such as consensus layer, data availability layer (DA), settlement layer, and transaction execution layer, with these modules assigned to different chains for processing, allowing professionals to handle specialized tasks rather than having a single chain bear all responsibilities, thus improving efficiency. For example, the previously popular modular public chain Celestia (TIA) focuses on data storage and verification.

The modular execution layer designed by Altius focuses on enhancing the execution efficiency of smart contract logic. The Altius Stack execution layer toolkit boasts powerful parallel processing and cross-chain connectivity capabilities, enhancing blockchain performance while also providing strong scalability, supporting plug-and-play and seamless integration into Layer 1, Layer 2, and various VM chains.

Altius Stack acts like a "central kitchen" for the execution layer, allowing developers to efficiently outsource cumbersome execution layer tasks, freeing them from complex execution layer design and enabling them to focus on the development and innovation of other core network functions.

This innovative model significantly reduces the burden on developers, allowing them to invest valuable time and energy into deepening protocol functionalities and refining applications, thereby promoting the prosperous development of the blockchain ecosystem.

Altius Stack to be launched in Q4

Currently, Altius's specific products have not yet been released. According to Altius's official roadmap, its Altius Stack execution layer is expected to achieve integration with EVM-compatible Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks in the first quarter (Q1) of this year; compatibility will be expanded 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 unique to Altius; similar concepts are also reflected in the Fuel project. Fuel is a modular execution layer specifically designed for the Ethereum Rollup ecosystem. Its V2 version introduces the FuelVM architecture, which is a general-purpose execution stack that supports integration with any chain.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。