Telos Announces the Incubation of Gigachain and Bold New Vision for a Venture Production Studio

The Telos Foundation is excited to announce the successful incubation of Gigachain, the first strategic project under our new vision to transition Telos into a community-owned Venture Production Studio. This move marks the beginning of a new era where Telos is no longer just a high-performance L1 blockchain but an ecosystem builder, creating, nurturing, and launching projects that expand the utility of the TLOS token and redefine decentralized technology.

A Journey Rooted in ZK Innovation

The origins of Gigachain are deeply tied to Telos' commitment to zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. When Alberto Garoffolo joined the Telos Foundation, he brought with him the vision of data-preserving applications leveraging recursive proof composition. This vision led to the creation of SNARKtor, a groundbreaking privacy protocol that successfully launched on Testnet in January 2025.

Alongside this, Alberto also brought to Telos the idea of trustless parallelizable computation, a concept he had envisioned for many years. Gigachain is the realization of that vision, a scalable, decentralized platform capable of processing massive computational loads through trustless parallel execution.

Following the successful deployment of SNARKtor, John Lilic, the newly appointed CEO of Telos, instructed the ZK team to focus their expertise on Gigachain. During the incubation period from February 1st to May 1st, the team not only produced a technical whitepaper, which Alberto began drafting in December, but also developed a working prototype for Gigachain, an achievement that signifies a major leap in trustless parallel execution.

Gigachain’s development was executed under stealth mode to protect the groundbreaking nature of the technology and ensure a flawless prototype build-out. The technical whitepaper is now live and available for the public at Gigachain Whitepaper, coinciding with Alberto's technical presentation at the ZK Summit in Toronto on May 12, 2025. Alberto would like to extend his gratitude to Dmytro Kaidalov, Roman Oliynykov, and Mariia Rodinko for their extraordinary contributions and collaborative efforts in making this groundbreaking whitepaper a reality.

Pre-Seed Funding and Strategic Partnerships

Gigachain’s development was supported by a $1 million pre-seed investment from Presto Labs last year, split equally between Telos and Gigalabs. This funding was strategically allocated:

● $500,000 to the Telos Foundation to advance the Hardware Accelerated zkEVM L2

● $500,000 to Gigalabs for the development of Gigachain

These funds enabled Gigalabs to work with top-tier partners such as Horizen Labs Ventures for tokenomics and Serotonin for branding, website development, PR, and marketing. Even with these strategic expenditures, Gigalabs retains a significant portion of this investment to fund contractor payments as it transitions off the Telos Foundation incubation payroll.

Gigachain Roadmap and Future Vision

Gigachain's development is progressing rapidly. Here’s what’s next:

● Prototype Completed – May 1, 2025

● Summer 2025 – Launch of the Telos Staking Program

● Late 2026 – Testnet launch of Gigachain

● 2027 – Mainnet release

Future updates will include how community members can participate as stakers, developers, and network participants, reinforcing Gigachain's commitment to both exclusivity and true decentralization.

Collaborative Development: Telos & Gigalabs

The development of SNARKtor and its deployment on Telos represent a powerful collaborative effort between the Telos Foundation and Gigalabs. While the ZK team transitioned from Telos Foundation to Gigalabs, this does not mark the end of ZK technology at Telos. Instead, Gigalabs will continue to work closely with Telos Foundation, offering advisory and technical guidance to further build upon the SNARKtor work and expand its applications within the Telos ecosystem.

Celebrating Innovation and Looking Forward

Alberto Garoffolo's vision for parallelized computation has been instrumental in this journey. His contributions at Telos Foundation and now at Gigalabs are a testament to his expertise and commitment to blockchain innovation. Early performance estimations are hugely impressive. John Lilic, Telos CEO, is incredibly excited about the technological breakthrough and has voiced strong confidence in the Gigalabs team's ability to deliver on this ambitious vision.

We are incredibly grateful for the support of our community, whose belief in the Telos vision fuels our ambition to innovate and expand. Gigachain’s launch marks a powerful step forward, and we are excited to continue this journey together as we build the next generation of decentralized technology.

— The Telos Foundation

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