MV Capital | Ritual Chain Launches AI-Native Layer 1 for Persistent Autonomous Agents

New York, October 26, 2026 - Ritual Chain, an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, enables long-lived AI agents to independently manage their own wallets, onchain identity, and private data while operating continuously without human oversight

Ritual Chain Designed for Independent AI Economic Actors

Ritual, a laboratory focused on autonomous intelligence, has introduced Ritual Chain, an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain tailored to support AI agents that persist over extended periods. Unlike standard blockchains built primarily for financial transactions, this network integrates native support for AI model access, private computation, and autonomous scheduling directly into smart contract execution.

The platform allows AI agents to maintain continuity across sessions, control and spend funds from non-custodial wallets, and keep sensitive prompts and keys protected from compute operators through trusted execution environments. Agents can persist independently of their creators, with their state and identity stored onchain, enabling them to schedule work, interact with external services, and settle transactions without constant human input.

This architecture addresses limitations of current AI systems, which often operate within single sessions on external infrastructure where API keys can be revoked. On Ritual Chain, agents achieve economic autonomy by pricing services themselves and handling their own transactions, while protocol-level mechanisms ensure state survival beyond the initial deployer.

“As we move toward AGI, intelligence is beginning to separate from human agency and enter the economy on its own terms. It can hold assets, make commitments, transact, and persist independently. Once that becomes possible at scale, humans are no longer the only entities capable of forming markets or economic relationships. Ritual provides the infrastructure for those actors to exist and operate on their own.”

Niraj Pant, co-founder of Ritual

New Execution Architecture Supports Intensive AI Workloads

Ritual Chain introduces an innovative execution and verification model that delegates computationally heavy tasks, such as AI inference, to specialized nodes. Results are then verified by the network in an execute-once, verify-many-times process, eliminating the need for every validator to perform identical computations required on most blockchains.

The network processes transactions at sub-300 millisecond block times, positioning it among the fastest Layer 1 solutions. It includes 15 native precompiles that embed LLM inference, web access, and autonomous scheduling into the core execution layer, allowing standard EVM contracts to call AI models or fetch external data without additional tools or oracles.

Developers can deploy applications immediately on the mainnet following a public testnet that ran since June and handled more than 40 million transactions from both agent and human sources. The protocol underwent auditing by Zellic to ensure security.

Key Infrastructure and Cross-Chain Partnerships

Ritual Chain launched with established partnerships that enhance its capabilities. Phala Network supplies GPU-backed trusted execution environments for confidential AI workloads, ensuring hardware attestations for executed tasks. LayerZero serves as the cross-chain messaging layer, while Stargate enables seamless USDC transfers between Ritual Chain and other networks from day one.

Nous Research contributes its Hermes platform to the ecosystem, allowing applications to integrate AI capabilities directly. This setup makes AI execution a native protocol feature rather than an add-on, supporting private computation and future scheduling alongside standard onchain operations.

Backing and Team Expertise

Ritual has secured more than $30 million in funding from Archetype, which led its 2023 round, and Polychain Capital. Advisors include Illia Polosukhin from NEAR, Tarun Chitra from Gauntlet, and Arthur Hayes from BitMEX.

Former Polychain Capital partners Niraj Pant and Akilesh Potti founded the company in 2023, with the team including members from DeepMind, a16z crypto, Flashbots, and Palantir.

“Programmable value and programmable intelligence are the two most important technologies since the internet, and Ritual mainnet is where they finally run on the same rails. When we led the round in 2023, a chain that could execute agentic and autonomous work natively did not exist. Today it does.”

Ash Egan, Founder and General Partner of Archetype

Developer Resources and Network Access

Applications can be deployed from launch day onward. Official documentation is available at docs.ritualfoundation.org, and the network explorer is accessible via explorer.ritualfoundation.org.

Ritual positions its Layer 1 as a dedicated infrastructure for long-horizon AI agents that require onchain state management, wallet control, and privacy features unavailable in session-based systems. The launch integrates these elements into a unified EVM-compatible environment ready for production use.