Layer exits from stealth with a $6 million seed round led by 1kx, with backing from Fabric Ventures, Arrington Capital, Stake Capital Group, and notable angels like Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer), Rok Kopp, Mike Silagadze (Ether.fi), and Paul Taylor (formerly BlackRock).
Founded by three blockchain veterans, Layer is aiming to extend Ethereum’s core trust guarantees to everyday software applications, including AI Agents. Their product, Layer SDK, allows developers to create fast, decentralized, and secure code in any language with built-in affordability and decentralization—making incorruptible internet foundations accessible to all.
The startup’s vision is a future where any internet application, including AI Agents, is protected against manipulation, including threats from malicious AI. With Web Assembly as the backbone, Layer SDK enables developers to build full-stack decentralized applications that run seamlessly across different environments—from servers to smartphones—while maintaining security and trust.
Layer’s Actively Validated Layer (AVL) architecture uses Web Assembly to run Containerized Actively Validated Services (CAVS), allowing developers to build high-performance blockchains by leveraging restaked Ethereum assets and operators on EigenLayer, with Ethereum serving as the settlement layer. “Smart contracts alone aren’t enough to support a fully decentralized internet,” said co-founder Sam Cassatt, emphasizing that Layer provides tools to build scalable applications with trust-minimized solutions.
Founded by blockchain pioneers Sam Cassatt, Jake Hartnell, and Ethan Frey, the team leverages their extensive blockchain experience—from MetaMask wallets to cross-chain protocols—to bring trust, scalability, and security to a new digital age. Layer SDK simplifies the development of decentralized frontends, AI Agents, indexing, ZK verifiers, prover marketplaces, serverless functions, messaging protocols, and more, giving developers sovereignty over their applications while using Ethereum’s foundational security.
“Layer’s SDK delivers scalability and flexibility, solving the limitations of traditional smart contracts and enabling shared-security applications,” notes 1Kx Research Partner, Wei Dai. “By defining a new category of shared economic security that spans hybrid off-chain and on-chain worlds, we believe Layer can be a Schelling point for new teams looking to build applications taking advantage of these core primitives,” added Richard Muirhead, Managing Partner at Fabric Ventures.
Layer SDK aims to fulfill blockchain’s original promise of creating trustworthy digital experiences, from UI to core functionality, with the decentralized security of smart contracts and AI Agents. By providing intuitive tools and robust infrastructure, Layer empowers developers to create interoperable, unstoppable applications for the decentralized web.
