The Road to Blockchain Scalability and Interoperability at the Execution Layer

Altius is developing VM-agnostic, high-performance execution layers compatible with any chains to futureproof blockchain infrastructure.

The Altius Stack decouples blockchain execution layers from single binary implementations and network design, enabling seamless integration with any Layer 1s, Layer 2s, and application-specific chains for instant performance boosts and enhanced interoperability. The architecture aims to achieve Web2 parity for on-chain use cases in a multi-chain future, ensuring onboarded chains are futureproofed for performance.

This litepaper provides an overview of our technical approach and the roadmap.

Altius’ Technical Architecture: Core Innovations

Altius introduces three foundational pillars to optimize blockchain execution:

1. Parallel Scalable Storage

Traditional blockchains face state access bottlenecks, increasing latency as network activity grows. Altius partitions data into multiple shards, enabling concurrent read/write operations across nodes. This approach ensures that high-throughput processing can be achieved without overwhelming storage infrastructure.

2. Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) with Conflict Resolution

Rather than executing transactions sequentially, Altius processes them at the instruction level. Using Static Single Assignment (SSA), it identifies and re-executes only conflicting instructions while allowing non-conflicting ones to run concurrently. This reduces execution delays, increases overall network efficiency, and optimizes gas usage.

3. Developer Optimization via the Application Code Assessor (ACA)

The ACA evaluates smart contract efficiency and rewards developers for optimizing execution throughput. By incentivizing contract designs that reduce conflicts and maximize parallel execution, Altius ensures that dApps remain scalable and cost-efficient as blockchain adoption grows.

Together, these innovations eliminate performance bottlenecks, ensuring that blockchains scale efficiently, interoperate seamlessly, and remain future-proof for the next generation of decentralized applications.

How Altius Works

A Modular Execution Layer for Blockchain Performance

The Altius Stack introduces a modular, VM-agnostic execution framework that optimizes blockchain performance by decoupling execution from network constraints.

1. Scalable and Future-Proof Storage Without Specialized Hardware

Traditional blockchains often struggle with latency and I/O bottlenecks due to inefficient state storage mechanisms. Altius addresses this challenge by dividing state into multiple shards, distributing data across nodes to enable parallel processing, concurrent read/write operations, and scalable storage management. 

By integrating sharding and distributed caching, Altius not only reduces infrastructure costs but also ensures long-term scalability. Unlike architectures that rely on single-machine storage, which can become a bottleneck as demand grows, Altius’ distributed approach allows networks to scale efficiently while maintaining decentralization. This makes high-performance blockchain execution more accessible to developers and networks, without introducing centralization risks.

2. VM-Agnostic - compatible with any blockchain

Altius is designed to support multiple virtual machines, including EVM, MoveVM, and WASM. Its Rust-based interpreters enable seamless integration and native optimization across blockchain environments, ensuring long-term modularity while allowing developers to build in their preferred programming languages.

3. High-performance via instruction-level parallelism instead of transaction-level

Instead of executing transactions sequentially, Altius optimizes execution at the instruction level. By leveraging Static Single Assignment (SSA), only conflicting instructions are re-executed rather than processing entire transactions from scratch. This selective re-execution eliminates redundant computation, significantly reduces gas fees, and increases throughput by maximizing available processing power.

4. Beyond just optmizing the stack, we also incentivize developers to build more performant applications

Altius goes beyond optimizing the execution stack—it actively incentivizes developers to build efficient smart contracts that maximize parallel execution potential. The Application Code Assessor evaluates smart contracts based on gas efficiency, execution throughput, and conflict minimization. Developers who create performance-optimized applications receive token incentives, fostering an ecosystem that prioritizes scalability and efficient execution.

To ensure execution consistency and reliability, Altius implements a deterministic concurrency model. This approach minimizes execution conflicts and promotes efficient coding patterns that optimize resource utilization. As a result, developers benefit from lower gas fees, reduced processing overhead, and a more streamlined development experience.

Why Altius Is Uniquely Positioned

Altius is not another blockchain. It is a scalable execution layer designed to enhance performance across existing networks. Our expertise and technical innovations position us as a leader in unlocking blockchain scalability and interoperability.

Our engineering team comes from Hudson River Trading (HRT) and other high-frequency trading firms, bringing deep expertise in distributed systems, conflict resolution, and execution optimization. This background allows us to design infrastructure that efficiently handles high-volume transaction processing and ensures that blockchains can scale effectively. Having worked extensively across Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystems, we understand the limitations of existing solutions. While other scaling approaches focus on adding blockspace or introducing rollups, Altius directly addresses execution bottlenecks, ensuring transactions are processed efficiently without compromising decentralization.

As CTO Anit Chakraborty says: “The Altius Stack delivers high-performance execution without requiring specialized hardware, maintaining both decentralization and accessibility. By intentionally opting for a modular design over a monolithic architecture—despite the added complexity—we’ve created a solution that empowers any ecosystem in a multi-chain world.”

Roadmap & Next Steps

We’re committed to building an ecosystem where Altius acts as the central execution engine for all blockchain networks, regardless of their VM or development stack. Our roadmap outlines the next major milestones:

🔶 Q1 2025: EVM-Based Layer 1 & Layer 2 Integration

• Full support for Ethereum L1s and L2s, ensuring seamless dApp execution across major ecosystems.

🔶 Q2 2025: Expansion to AltVM Environments

• Support for SVM, MoveVM, CosmWasm and other VMs to be compatible with any blockchain — whether Solidity, Rust, or Move—providing optimized performance and cross-chain interoperability.

🔶 2025 & Beyond: Shared Execution Layer

• Altius will horizontally integrate the network utilizing the Altius Stack into a Shared Execution Layer, providing an execution infrastructure that enhances parallel processing across multiple chains. This solution will offer optimized execution resources via dynamic balancing, enabling developers to improve scalability and reduce latency for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. The Shared Execution Layer will serve as a foundation for broader use cases, facilitating cross-chain operations with improved throughput and efficiency.

This roadmap reflects our commitment to create VM-agnostic, high-performance execution layers compatible with any chains to futureproof blockchain infrastructure. Altius aims to set new standards for blockchain scalability, while enabling seamless cross-chain connectivity. With Altius, blockchain ecosystems will have continuous access to industry-leading execution performance, so they can focus on building what matters. 

The Future of Blockchain with Altius

As the blockchain industry transitions from fat protocols to fat applications, and from monolithic to modular designs, high-performance execution will become a core requirement for scaling. Projects across DeFi, GameFi, SocialFi, and AI will depend on execution layers that can deliver parallel processing and cross-chain interoperability.

With Altius, we provide a plug-and-play solution that lowers technical barriers and empowers developers to innovate without worrying about infrastructure. We’re here to set a new standard for blockchain performance and scalability.

Join Us on This Journey

Altius is more than just an execution framework—it’s a vision for a blockchain future where scalability, interoperability, and efficiency are built into the foundation.

We’re excited to share more in the coming months, including technical insights, partnerships, and community initiatives. If you share our vision for a better blockchain ecosystem, join us as we build the infrastructure to power it.