Circle Layer
High-Performance EVM-Compatible Blockchain
Circle Layer is a high-performance, EVM-compatible, Proof of Stake Layer 1 blockchain with AI security.
50,000+
TPS Target
High-performance blockchain designed for mass adoption and DeFi.
3 Second
Block Time
Fast and reliable block production with 1-3 second finality.
100%
EVM-compatibility
Use the existing EVM ecosystem to your advantage.
AI Security
Features
Coming in Phase 2: Agentic AI for pre-deployment vulnerability scanning and real-time threat detection.
Over 90% of all capital in DeFi is in EVM apps.
The EVM is the ubiquitous standard of web3. In spite of this and all of the resources being poured into the EVM, EVM-compatible blockchains have extremely low throughput.
Ethereum supports roughly 10 TPS, and no EVM rollup is over 50 TPS.
Why?
The unwillingness of the industry to modify and optimize the Virtual Machine has led to minor improvements to overall throughput.
Different consensus mechanisms are able to support shorter block times and somewhat higher gas limits (i.e. execution budgets); the combination of these factors results in a 5x improvement in throughput for the EVM blockchains relative to Ethereum. While this sounds impressive, it's against a very low baseline of 10 TPS.
It's extremely expensive to scale decentralization.
Nodes require powerful and expensive RAM to run costing thousands to even begin participating in the network, making it incredibly difficult to scale decentralization.
Introducing Circle Layer.
With Circle Layer, a new paradigm of blockchain technology is available to developers and users solving both performance and market issues with 4 key features.
Optimistic Parallel Execution
Circle Layer implements multi-threaded transaction processing. By executing transactions in parallel across multiple cores and predicting dependencies, we achieve massive throughput gains while maintaining deterministic execution order and EVM compatibility.
Asynchronous Execution
Execution begins on a block after consensus completes, running in parallel to the next block's consensus.
Circle Layer DPoS
Circle Layer uses Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus with a minimum of 5 active validators on testnet (up to 21 validators), scaling to up to 10,000 validators on mainnet. Staking requirements: 32 CLAYER minimum (testnet), 100,000 CLAYER minimum (mainnet). This energy-efficient mechanism provides 3-second block times with 1-3 second finality while maintaining network security and decentralization.
The Circle Layer client is built with a monolithic architecture, optimized for high performance and security. Our implementation leverages proven technologies to deliver reliable blockchain infrastructure.
Circle Layer is based on Geth (Go Ethereum) and is written in Go (Golang), a memory-safe and performant language that provides excellent concurrency support. This proven implementation ensures compatibility with the Ethereum ecosystem while delivering the performance needed for high-throughput applications.
Circle Layer is designed as a Layer 1 blockchain to provide maximum performance, security, and decentralization. Our DPoS consensus mechanism enables high throughput while maintaining true decentralization.
As a Layer 1, Circle Layer offers direct composability, faster finality, and lower costs compared to Layer 2 solutions, while our planned AI security features will provide additional protection at the base layer.
A highly-performant base layer gives application developers the best of both worlds, with a high degree of composability and real-time censorship resistance in the name of scalability.