What is Solayer (LAYER)?

By CMC AI
28 January 2026 09:15PM (UTC+0)

TLDR

Solayer is a high-performance blockchain that uses hardware acceleration to achieve extreme scalability, initially launching as a restaking platform on Solana and evolving into its own infinitely scalable network called InfiniSVM.

  1. A hardware-accelerated blockchain designed to offload computations to specialized chips, targeting over 1 million transactions per second (TPS) with near-zero latency.

  2. An evolution from a restaking platform, starting as the first protocol to enable restaking of SOL and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) on Solana to secure additional services.

  3. Governed by the LAYER token, which is used for protocol upgrades, treasury management, and funding ecosystem initiatives, with planned future utility for network security and transaction fees.

Deep Dive

1. Purpose & Value Proposition

Solayer aims to solve blockchain scalability bottlenecks for real-time financial applications. Its core thesis is that true scalability requires moving beyond software to dedicated hardware. The project began in 2024 as a restaking layer on Solana, allowing users to "restake" their staked SOL or LSTs to secure Actively Validated Services (AVSs) and earn additional yield, thereby improving capital efficiency and network security (Solayer Foundation). By 2025, it pivoted to building InfiniSVM, a standalone, hardware-accelerated blockchain targeting over 1 million TPS to enable use cases like high-frequency trading and instant settlement (CoinMarketCap).

2. Technology & Architecture

The key innovation is the InfiniSVM architecture. It uses a multi-execution cluster model connected via high-speed networking technologies like InfiniBand and RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) to achieve massive throughput and sub-second finality. This "hardware offloading" moves critical blockchain operations to programmable chips (FPGAs), drastically reducing latency. The network is fully compatible with the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), allowing developers to port applications with minimal code changes (Binance News).

3. Tokenomics & Governance

The LAYER token has a maximum supply of 1 billion. At launch, its primary utility is governance, enabling holders to vote on protocol upgrades, treasury diversification, and grant funding for ecosystem projects (CoinMarketCap). Future utility is planned to include using LAYER for paying transaction fees (gas) and participating in a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism to secure the network and earn rewards. The majority of the supply (51.23%) is allocated to the community and ecosystem growth (Solayer Foundation).

Conclusion

Solayer is fundamentally an infrastructure project building an ultra-fast, hardware-accelerated execution layer to support the next generation of real-time on-chain applications. As its $35 million ecosystem fund (CoinDesk) suggests, the critical question is whether developers will leverage its performance to create sustainable, high-throughput businesses.

CMC AI can make mistakes. Not financial advice.