Hong Kong, China, May 23rd, 2025, Chainwire

The Gigachain Protocol unlocks complex, high-computation use cases previously impossible on traditional blockchain architectures.

Gigachain Labs, a new Layer 1 blockchain built for true scalability and pre-seeded by Presto Labs and incubated by the Telos Foundation, announces its protocol: Gigachain, a SNARK-based protocol that enables trustless parallel execution. The protocol is the first to achieve decentralized, permissionless, non-conflicting concurrent transactions processing while preserving security guarantees and state consistency. 

Historically, traditional blockchains are designed to process transactions sequentially, also requiring each validator to execute the whole chain’s throughput. This has throttled the performance of all chains, making true scaling beyond simple transactions extremely challenging to achieve. Chains have reacted by offloading computation to off-chain solutions at the expense of decentralization, security, and user experience. 

With trustless parallel execution, Gigachain reframes how the blockchain ecosystem considers throughput. Today's focus is on transaction speed, or TPS. What Gigachain enables with parallel execution is not just transaction speed, but transaction weight. Instructions per Second (IPS) is a measurement of how much computation a blockchain can handle. Gigachain is built to achieve over 61 billion IPS – or a +500x improvement compared to a multi-thread execution model like Solana’s one and over 10000x compared to a fully sequential model like the one used by Ethereum. Gigachain achieves this by using zk-SNARKs to enable decentralized, parallel transaction processing. The result is a blockchain that is capable of handling complex, high-weight computational tasks at scale, unlocking a new era of blockchain scalability, performance, and use case expansion.

Gigachain’s new protocol organizes transactions into non-conflicting batches, which are executed and proven in parallel, distributing execution across multiple decentralized entities. These batch proofs are aggregated into a single proof that validates the entire block. As a result, the protocol both trustlessly distributes the execution workload and removes redundant re-execution from the network, improving blockchain throughput while not sacrificing decentralization.

“Today’s blockchain scaling conversations are focused on theoretical TPS numbers, but they miss the real problem,” said Alberto Garoffolo, CTO of Gigachain. “The world’s computation runs in parallel — across millions of machines, cores, and actors. Blockchain can’t remain sequential and expect to scale. Gigachain makes trustless parallel execution finally possible.”

By solving decentralized computation scaling, Gigachain positions itself as critical infrastructure for the future of blockchain applications. Gigachain is founded by former leaders of IOHK and Telos Foundation venture arm, including Alberto Garoffolo, former Head of ZK at Telos, CTO at Horizen, and Head of Engineering (Midnight) at IOHK—recognized for his pioneering work on zk-SNARKs, recursive proofs, and decentralized blockchain scaling architectures. The team includes technical leaders like Paolo Tagliaferri,  Ljubiša Isaković, Marco Olivero, Daniele Di Tullio, and Momčilo Miladinovićand.

Garoffolo revealed Gigachain’s new protocol during a live presentation at zkSummit13 on May 12, 2025.

About Gigachain

Gigachain is a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for scalable, trustless parallel execution. Leveraging a novel SNARK-based architecture, Gigachain is the first decentralized protocol to achieve permissionless, non-conflicting concurrent transaction processing, without compromising on state consistency or security. By rethinking execution from the ground up, Gigachain distributes computation across decentralized actors and eliminates redundant processing across the network, unlocking performance breakthroughs for high-weight and complex workloads. Pre-seeded by Presto Labs and incubated by the Telos Foundation, Gigachain is led by a team of pioneers in zero-knowledge cryptography and blockchain infrastructure from IOHK, Telos, and Horizen. Gigachain’s testnet is expected to launch in 2025, with mainnet targeted for 2027.

Gigachain’s testnet is expected to launch in 2026, with mainnet targeted for 2027.

For more information, users can visit: www.gigachain.com

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