Cloud PR Wire

Author: Chain Wire

  • 617 Collective Appoints Victor Martinez as Partner and Head of Capital Markets

    New York, New York, June 30th, 2026, FinanceWire

    Former Citi and JP Morgan Executive Joins as 617 Collective Advances Plan to Deploy Up to $100 Million Across Founder-Led Marketing, Media, and Creator Economy Businesses

    617 Collective LLC, a New York-based acquisition platform focused on founder-led agencies across modern marketing, media, public relations, digital content, and the creator economy, today announced the appointment of Victor Martinez as Partner and Head of Capital Markets.

    Martinez will lead 617 Collective’s capital markets strategy, strategic financing relationships, lender engagement, and corporate development as the firm advances its plan to deploy up to $100 million across acquisition and partnership opportunities this year. His appointment strengthens the institutional infrastructure required to execute a disciplined acquisition strategy across a fragmented and rapidly evolving sector.

    Martinez brings more than 20 years of investment banking and capital markets experience from Citi and JP Morgan, where he advised companies on financing transactions, strategic growth initiatives, public market positioning, and capital formation across technology, media, and consumer sectors.

    As Head of Capital Markets, Martinez will work closely with banks, lenders, private investment firms, family offices, and strategic financial partners to support 617 Collective’s acquisition pipeline and broader platform growth.

    617 Collective is building a long-term acquisition platform for founder-led businesses across influencer marketing, talent management, public relations, digital media, creative services, branded content, and creator commerce. The firm targets businesses with strong client relationships, specialized capabilities, durable market positions, and opportunities to benefit from shared infrastructure and strategic support.

    Unlike traditional private equity-backed roll-up strategies, 617 Collective follows a long-term holding model designed to preserve founder leadership, creative independence, and brand identity while providing capital, operational resources, shared services, and strategic guidance.

    Cynthia Monroy, Managing Partner of 617 Collective, commented:

    “Victor’s appointment is an important step in the continued institutionalization of 617 Collective. His experience across global banking, capital markets, and strategic financing strengthens our ability to execute our acquisition strategy with discipline and credibility.”

    Victor Martinez added:

    “617 Collective is addressing a fragmented market with a disciplined acquisition strategy and long-term ownership model. I’m excited to help build the capital markets relationships and strategic financing framework needed to support the platform’s growth and acquisition pipeline.”

    617 Collective has already begun executing on this strategy through its acquisitions of Nominee and Zanahoria Azul, two founder-led agencies that reflect the firm’s focus on specialized, culturally relevant businesses across modern marketing, media, and the creator economy. These transactions are early examples of 617 Collective’s long-term partnership model, which preserves founder leadership and brand identity while providing the infrastructure and strategic support needed to scale.

    As the creator economy and modern marketing services sector matures, founders are increasingly seeking partners that provide scale, operational support, and long-term alignment without sacrificing independence, culture, or client relationships. By combining patient capital, operational expertise, shared services, and sector-specific knowledge, 617 Collective aims to build a portfolio of category-leading businesses positioned for long-term growth.

    About 617 Collective

    617 Collective LLC is a New York-based acquisition platform that acquires and partners with founder-led agencies operating across influencer marketing, talent management, public relations, digital media, branded content, creator commerce, and creative services. The firm follows a long-term holding strategy designed to preserve founder leadership, brand identity, and entrepreneurial culture while providing capital, strategic oversight, operational infrastructure, and shared services to support sustainable growth.

    Contact

    Smith
    Lilian
    617 Collective LLC
    press@617collective.com

  • 617 Collective Appoints Victor Martinez as Partner and Head of Capital Markets

    New York, New York, June 30th, 2026, FinanceWire

    Former Citi and JP Morgan Executive Joins as 617 Collective Advances Plan to Deploy Up to $100 Million Across Founder-Led Marketing, Media, and Creator Economy Businesses

    617 Collective LLC, a New York-based acquisition platform focused on founder-led agencies across modern marketing, media, public relations, digital content, and the creator economy, today announced the appointment of Victor Martinez as Partner and Head of Capital Markets.

    Martinez will lead 617 Collective’s capital markets strategy, strategic financing relationships, lender engagement, and corporate development as the firm advances its plan to deploy up to $100 million across acquisition and partnership opportunities this year. His appointment strengthens the institutional infrastructure required to execute a disciplined acquisition strategy across a fragmented and rapidly evolving sector.

    Martinez brings more than 20 years of investment banking and capital markets experience from Citi and JP Morgan, where he advised companies on financing transactions, strategic growth initiatives, public market positioning, and capital formation across technology, media, and consumer sectors.

    As Head of Capital Markets, Martinez will work closely with banks, lenders, private investment firms, family offices, and strategic financial partners to support 617 Collective’s acquisition pipeline and broader platform growth.

    617 Collective is building a long-term acquisition platform for founder-led businesses across influencer marketing, talent management, public relations, digital media, creative services, branded content, and creator commerce. The firm targets businesses with strong client relationships, specialized capabilities, durable market positions, and opportunities to benefit from shared infrastructure and strategic support.

    Unlike traditional private equity-backed roll-up strategies, 617 Collective follows a long-term holding model designed to preserve founder leadership, creative independence, and brand identity while providing capital, operational resources, shared services, and strategic guidance.

    Cynthia Monroy, Managing Partner of 617 Collective, commented:

    “Victor’s appointment is an important step in the continued institutionalization of 617 Collective. His experience across global banking, capital markets, and strategic financing strengthens our ability to execute our acquisition strategy with discipline and credibility.”

    Victor Martinez added:

    “617 Collective is addressing a fragmented market with a disciplined acquisition strategy and long-term ownership model. I’m excited to help build the capital markets relationships and strategic financing framework needed to support the platform’s growth and acquisition pipeline.”

    617 Collective has already begun executing on this strategy through its acquisitions of Nominee and Zanahoria Azul, two founder-led agencies that reflect the firm’s focus on specialized, culturally relevant businesses across modern marketing, media, and the creator economy. These transactions are early examples of 617 Collective’s long-term partnership model, which preserves founder leadership and brand identity while providing the infrastructure and strategic support needed to scale.

    As the creator economy and modern marketing services sector matures, founders are increasingly seeking partners that provide scale, operational support, and long-term alignment without sacrificing independence, culture, or client relationships. By combining patient capital, operational expertise, shared services, and sector-specific knowledge, 617 Collective aims to build a portfolio of category-leading businesses positioned for long-term growth.

    About 617 Collective

    617 Collective LLC is a New York-based acquisition platform that acquires and partners with founder-led agencies operating across influencer marketing, talent management, public relations, digital media, branded content, creator commerce, and creative services. The firm follows a long-term holding strategy designed to preserve founder leadership, brand identity, and entrepreneurial culture while providing capital, strategic oversight, operational infrastructure, and shared services to support sustainable growth.

    Contact

    Smith
    Lilian
    617 Collective LLC
    press@617collective.com

  • Clarity Global Inc Expands Payment Infrastructure for Global Businesses

    Toronto, Canada, June 30th, 2026, FinanceWire

    Canadian fintech Clarity Global Inc – registered as an authorized Money Services Business under FINTRAC – has expanded its cross-border payment infrastructure to serve 400+ businesses, with every client supported by a dedicated account manager from day one.

    Why cross-border payments remain broken

    There is a moment every internationally active business knows. A payment gets stuck. A provider asks for documents that have already been submitted three times. A market you just entered turns out to be on someone’s internal restricted list. The person on the other end of the phone has never heard of the business and has no intention of helping.

    Traditional financial institutions were not built for companies that move fast, operate across multiple jurisdictions, or work in industries outside the conventional risk appetite. For iGaming operators, global service providers, and marketers’ businesses, getting access to payment infrastructure is already difficult. Keeping it is harder. Delays eat into cash flow. Compliance rejections block expansion. FX fees drain margins on every transaction.

    “We saw businesses creating real economic value – and still being turned away by providers who simply didn’t understand them,” said Mariia Menahem, CEO of Clarity Global Inc. “That gap was the reason we started.”

    One manager. One relationship. No ticket queues.

    When Clarity Global takes on a new client, the first thing that happens is not an automated email. It is a conversation with a dedicated account manager who handles that account personally – from the first document review through to payment operations.

    That manager knows the client’s business structure, payment corridors, compliance profile, and the jurisdictions they operate in. When something needs to move fast, there is no escalation chain. There is one person who picks up the phone.

    Onboarding takes 2-14 business days – up to twice as fast as traditional financial institutions for comparable business profiles. For businesses that have spent months waiting on providers who keep asking the same questions, that timeline alone changes how they plan and grow. And unlike platforms that hand you a portal and disappear, that manager stays with the client long after the account goes live – accountable for what happens next.

    Payment infrastructure and core services

    Multi-currency IBANs and global rails

    Through multi-currency IBANs, clients get virtual accounts, with access to SEPA, SWIFT, CHAPS, ACH. Coverage reaches 180+ countries across 70+ currencies. Dedicated and aggregated IBANs are available for businesses, UBOs, and employees – so every entity in a corporate structure can collect and send funds with a local payment identity in the markets it serves.

    Foreign exchange and on/off-ramp solutions

    Foreign exchange services are built for businesses that convert currency regularly and cannot afford unpredictable costs on every transaction. Rates and execution terms are agreed transparently based on volume and business profile – particularly important given that, according to the Financial Stability Board’s 2024 report, average FX margins across regions sit at approximately 2%, while fees on cross-border transactions range from 2.3% to 6%, costs that compound significantly for businesses with high transaction volumes. For businesses working with crypto, on/off-ramp solutions are facilitated through a network of trusted partners – allowing businesses to move between crypto and fiat as part of their broader payment flow, without needing a separate exchange relationship.

    Business debit cards

    Business debit cards come in physical and virtual formats, can be topped up in fiat or crypto via partner solutions, and work with Apple Pay and Google Pay. The shift toward virtual and business card solutions is already well underway: in 2024, businesses accounted for over 71% of the global virtual card market, with usage growing at 24.7% annually. A mobile app gives teams spending controls and balance visibility across every card. For internationally distributed teams, this means operational spending managed in one place without the friction of multiple providers.

    Serving medium-high risk and emerging verticals

    iGaming, forex and affiliate networks

    For example, Clarity Global works with a client – a licensed forex broker based in the Seychelles lost EU payment access when their provider terminated the relationship without warning. Their European operations were just days away from stopping completely.

    Their Clarity Global account manager already understood how brokers in that jurisdiction operate and what documentation their structure required. As a result, SEPA and SWIFT access was restored within three business days. The broker retained their European clients, and the business continued running without disruption.

    Regulation, compliance and growth

    Most fintechs treat compliance as a checkbox. Clarity Global built it as a foundation.

    From the beginning, one of the company’s core goals was to build an internal compliance team made up of genuine sector experts – people who understand not just the rules, but the industries they are applied to. Today that team includes a dedicated MLRO, a Deputy MLRO, and specialists with hands-on experience across iGaming, forex, e-commerce, and IT services. Their work is supported by external legal counsel, independent accounting, and an annual AML audit by a third-party firm. Policies are built to Canadian standards and aligned with EU and UK regulatory frameworks.

    “Building a strong internal compliance team was never just about meeting regulatory requirements,” said Mariia Menahem, CEO. “It was about being able to say yes to clients that everyone else turns away – and backing that up with the expertise to do it properly.”

    About Clarity Global Inc

    Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Canada and Ukraine, Clarity Global Inc. specializes in cross-border payment infrastructure for global businesses, holding MSB registration number M22927420 with Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre. The company has also registered as a Payment Service Provider with the Bank of Canada under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA).

    Contact

    Head of Marketing
    Alex Blishtein
    Clarity Global Inc
    alina.coordinator@clarityglobalinc.com

  • Clarity Global Inc Expands Payment Infrastructure for Global Businesses

    Toronto, Canada, June 30th, 2026, FinanceWire

    Canadian fintech Clarity Global Inc – registered as an authorized Money Services Business under FINTRAC – has expanded its cross-border payment infrastructure to serve 400+ businesses, with every client supported by a dedicated account manager from day one.

    Why cross-border payments remain broken

    There is a moment every internationally active business knows. A payment gets stuck. A provider asks for documents that have already been submitted three times. A market you just entered turns out to be on someone’s internal restricted list. The person on the other end of the phone has never heard of the business and has no intention of helping.

    Traditional financial institutions were not built for companies that move fast, operate across multiple jurisdictions, or work in industries outside the conventional risk appetite. For iGaming operators, global service providers, and marketers’ businesses, getting access to payment infrastructure is already difficult. Keeping it is harder. Delays eat into cash flow. Compliance rejections block expansion. FX fees drain margins on every transaction.

    “We saw businesses creating real economic value – and still being turned away by providers who simply didn’t understand them,” said Mariia Menahem, CEO of Clarity Global Inc. “That gap was the reason we started.”

    One manager. One relationship. No ticket queues.

    When Clarity Global takes on a new client, the first thing that happens is not an automated email. It is a conversation with a dedicated account manager who handles that account personally – from the first document review through to payment operations.

    That manager knows the client’s business structure, payment corridors, compliance profile, and the jurisdictions they operate in. When something needs to move fast, there is no escalation chain. There is one person who picks up the phone.

    Onboarding takes 2-14 business days – up to twice as fast as traditional financial institutions for comparable business profiles. For businesses that have spent months waiting on providers who keep asking the same questions, that timeline alone changes how they plan and grow. And unlike platforms that hand you a portal and disappear, that manager stays with the client long after the account goes live – accountable for what happens next.

    Payment infrastructure and core services

    Multi-currency IBANs and global rails

    Through multi-currency IBANs, clients get virtual accounts, with access to SEPA, SWIFT, CHAPS, ACH. Coverage reaches 180+ countries across 70+ currencies. Dedicated and aggregated IBANs are available for businesses, UBOs, and employees – so every entity in a corporate structure can collect and send funds with a local payment identity in the markets it serves.

    Foreign exchange and on/off-ramp solutions

    Foreign exchange services are built for businesses that convert currency regularly and cannot afford unpredictable costs on every transaction. Rates and execution terms are agreed transparently based on volume and business profile – particularly important given that, according to the Financial Stability Board’s 2024 report, average FX margins across regions sit at approximately 2%, while fees on cross-border transactions range from 2.3% to 6%, costs that compound significantly for businesses with high transaction volumes. For businesses working with crypto, on/off-ramp solutions are facilitated through a network of trusted partners – allowing businesses to move between crypto and fiat as part of their broader payment flow, without needing a separate exchange relationship.

    Business debit cards

    Business debit cards come in physical and virtual formats, can be topped up in fiat or crypto via partner solutions, and work with Apple Pay and Google Pay. The shift toward virtual and business card solutions is already well underway: in 2024, businesses accounted for over 71% of the global virtual card market, with usage growing at 24.7% annually. A mobile app gives teams spending controls and balance visibility across every card. For internationally distributed teams, this means operational spending managed in one place without the friction of multiple providers.

    Serving medium-high risk and emerging verticals

    iGaming, forex and affiliate networks

    For example, Clarity Global works with a client – a licensed forex broker based in the Seychelles lost EU payment access when their provider terminated the relationship without warning. Their European operations were just days away from stopping completely.

    Their Clarity Global account manager already understood how brokers in that jurisdiction operate and what documentation their structure required. As a result, SEPA and SWIFT access was restored within three business days. The broker retained their European clients, and the business continued running without disruption.

    Regulation, compliance and growth

    Most fintechs treat compliance as a checkbox. Clarity Global built it as a foundation.

    From the beginning, one of the company’s core goals was to build an internal compliance team made up of genuine sector experts – people who understand not just the rules, but the industries they are applied to. Today that team includes a dedicated MLRO, a Deputy MLRO, and specialists with hands-on experience across iGaming, forex, e-commerce, and IT services. Their work is supported by external legal counsel, independent accounting, and an annual AML audit by a third-party firm. Policies are built to Canadian standards and aligned with EU and UK regulatory frameworks.

    “Building a strong internal compliance team was never just about meeting regulatory requirements,” said Mariia Menahem, CEO. “It was about being able to say yes to clients that everyone else turns away – and backing that up with the expertise to do it properly.”

    About Clarity Global Inc

    Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Canada and Ukraine, Clarity Global Inc. specializes in cross-border payment infrastructure for global businesses, holding MSB registration number M22927420 with Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre. The company has also registered as a Payment Service Provider with the Bank of Canada under the Retail Payment Activities Act (RPAA).

    Contact

    Head of Marketing
    Alex Blishtein
    Clarity Global Inc
    alina.coordinator@clarityglobalinc.com

  • Autheo Introduces the Internet Operating System: A Decentralized Coordination Layer for Web, Blockchain, & AI

    Sheridan, USA / Wyoming, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    Five years in the making, Autheo is launching its decentralized operating system on Mainnet — after public testnet adoption surpassed 1.8 million wallets, nearly 1 million smart contracts, and 8.8 million transactions.

    Autheo today formally introduced its decentralized operating system to the public: a coordination layer designed to let the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents interoperate natively as a single system. The company is now launching its Mainnet — the production environment for the network — after more than a year of public testnet activity.

    THE COORDINATION LAYER THE INTERNET NEVER HAD

    The networking wars of the 1980s and early 1990s settled a principle that has shaped the Internet ever since: interoperability comes from pragmatic, openly deployed protocols, not top-down frameworks. The standards that won — TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS — succeeded by being practical and deployable, and the modern Internet still rests on them. The blockchain era took a different path: each network optimized for its own internal consistency — its own security model, consensus mechanism, APIs, SDKs, and developer tooling — and the result has been a fragmented landscape of largely siloed chains. The rapid rise of AI agents now amplifies that fragmentation, as a growing population of autonomous actors needs to transact across Web, blockchain, and AI systems that were never designed to coordinate with one another.

    Protocols such as IBC, LayerZero, CCIP, Wormhole, and Axelar have made meaningful progress on chain-to-chain messaging and asset transfer — but those efforts operate at the bridging layer. Autheo addresses the problem from a different angle: a shared substrate where Web services, blockchain networks, and AI agents coordinate natively on a common identity, communications, execution, and infrastructure layer, rather than relying on bridges that pass messages between otherwise disconnected systems.

    At the same time, approximately three-quarters of business applications today are delivered as SaaS, and identity, storage, compute, payments, and messaging already run as distributed services across the Web. The Internet, in other words, has quietly taken on many of the functions of an operating system. What it has lacked is the layer that lets those services — together with blockchain networks and AI agents — interoperate by default, rather than through one-off, brittle integrations built per partner, per protocol, and per chain.

    Autheo’s purpose is to provide that coordination and execution layer. The Autheo OS exposes the standard functions one would expect of an operating system—identity, scheduling, messaging, state, compute, storage, and execution—as open, programmable services that any application, protocol, or agent can call. The objective is an integration substrate on which Web2 systems, Web3 protocols, and AI agents can transact and collaborate without needing to know which environment the counterparty is in. For autonomous AI agents specifically, Autheo is built around an on-chain, quantum-resistant trust and identity layer — designed so agents can hold credentials, sign transactions, and invoke services without depending on external systems or exposing private keys. The two design imperatives behind the project are simple: integration and interoperability.

    “We didn’t set out to build just another network,” said Scott Bayless, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “We set out to find the right relation between the ones we already have. A body has many parts. A city is many trades. The Internet today is many systems — each doing its work, none of them moving as one. With Mainnet now live, Autheo is the layer where the web, the chain, and the agent can finally work together.”

    FOUNDED BY LONG-TIME COLLABORATORS

    Autheo was founded in July 2021 by Todd Mortenson and Scott Bayless, long-time collaborators who have built and operated multiple ventures together over the past two decades.

    The founders shared a simple thesis: the next phase of the Internet will be defined less by any single technology — and more by the coordination layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI to operate as a single system. Much of what ultimately matters in technology tends to begin far from the loudest places — quietly, slowly, by those who would not have been the obvious choices.

    Guided by that vision, the founders and engineering leadership spent the project’s first several years researching networks, ecosystems, protocol design, digital identity, post-quantum security, and decentralized coordination before building Autheo from the ground up around four distinct architectural foundations: TheoID — Autheo’s W3C-compliant Decentralized Identifier (DID) implementation — as the native identity primitive for users, services, and AI agents; PQCNet, Autheo’s post-quantum communications and identity framework, built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205); a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability; and an integrated EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, operating as a Proof-of-Stake network with delegated staking and licensed validator eligibility, secured by CometBFT block finality (“Proof of Autheo”).

    Solidity smart contracts can be deployed natively on Autheo or migrated from existing EVM-compatible chains, providing developers with a familiar development environment while benefiting from native IBC interoperability across the broader blockchain ecosystem.

    The research and development underlying the platform has also resulted in an expanding portfolio of patent families covering core architectural innovations, reflecting the team’s long-term intellectual property strategy surrounding decentralized operating systems, digital identity, interoperability, post-quantum security, and related technologies.

    Network engineering and Autheo’s post-quantum security architecture are led by Chief Engineering Officer Kenneth Harper, who has overseen the design, architecture, and implementation of the platform through public testnet and into Mainnet launch. Supporting those efforts is a multidisciplinary organization spanning engineering, product, project management, quality assurance, infrastructure, operations, ecosystem development, developer support, business development, partnerships, marketing, global channels, finance, legal, compliance, and intellectual property. Autheo’s broader contributor base spans approximately 100 people across 25 countries — blockchain pioneers, Fortune 500 operators, and researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech. Independent security audits have been completed by Halborn (testnet) and CertiK (Mainnet).

    Autheo collaborates with leading infrastructure, security, and ecosystem partners — including Zeeve, InfStones, Hydrex, Halborn, CertiK, TrustSwap, Team.Finance, Utila, Ape Bond, Antier, EVU, among others — across validator and node operations, security audits, custody, token services, and ecosystem development.

    TESTNET ADOPTION HAS COMPOUNDED

    Autheo’s public testnet went live in 2025 and, over its first twelve months, attracted approximately 350,000 wallets and 60,000 smart contracts as developers stress-tested the network. Following the May 12, 2026, announcement of Mainnet Phase 1, adoption accelerated. In the roughly 45 days since, cumulative wallet addresses have grown more than 5x and smart contracts have grown more than 15x. As of today, cumulative testnet totals stand at:

    • 1,812,088 wallet addresses
    • 968,502 smart contracts

    (Figures per Autheo network data, June 24, 2026. Independently verifiable on the public testnet explorer: testnet-explorer.autheo.com · verified contracts.)

    Daily activity over the past month has averaged approximately 30,000 new wallet addresses and 20,000 new smart contracts. The Autheo testnet is now onboarding more wallets and deploying more contracts in a single day than it did across full months of its first year. Contract density at this stage is unusual for a Layer-1 testnet and reflects the breadth of developer use cases the team has supported across the build-out.

    “Mainnet is live,” said Todd Mortenson, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “The industry will be racing to retrofit post-quantum security ahead of NIST’s timeline — our developers won’t have to. We built PQC in from the ground up. One interface for Web services, on-chain protocols, and AI agents. One million human developers on-chain within three years. And the AI agents building alongside them? Orders of magnitude more. The coordination layer for that future is live today.”

    WHAT’S NEXT

    With the testnet validating the architecture and the Mainnet now launching, Autheo’s near-term focus is on expanding partnerships across the Web2, Web3, and AI communities and supporting builders deploying applications, agents, and protocols on the platform.

    Developer Access (Mainnet, Live Today):

    Testnet explorer (with verified-contract source): testnet-explorer.autheo.com

    For developers seeking an early path into the Mainnet ecosystem, the Core Node and Prime Node tiers remain available at commerce.autheo.com (settlement via ETH on Arbitrum). These programs provide eligibility for long-term THEO token emissions, enabling developers to begin accumulating THEO for building, deploying, and participating in the network as the ecosystem expands. The Sovereign Validator Node program (399 nodes total) has its first 275 slots fully subscribed; the remaining 124 are reserved for enterprise partners and ecosystem customers. A dedicated builder portal at autheolabs.com is anticipated to launch, providing additional THEO token and validator allocations for projects deploying on the network.

    THEO is anticipated to become available on Hydrex.fi in early July 2026, with additional exchange access expected to follow.

    Additional documentation ecosystem, security, infrastructure, and listing announcements are expected over the coming weeks.

    ABOUT AUTHEO

    Autheo is building the Internet operating system — a decentralized coordination and execution layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents to interoperate as a single system. The platform utilizes W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as its native identity framework and is anchored by PQCNet, Autheo’s quantum-resistant communications and identity infrastructure built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205). Operating alongside Autheo’s sovereign Cosmos-based Layer 0 and EVM-compatible Layer 1, PQCNet is designed to provide next-generation security for digital identity, communications, authentication, encryption, and trusted interactions across Web, blockchain, and AI ecosystems.

    Autheo integrates a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability and an EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, allowing developers to deploy Solidity smart contracts natively or migrate existing applications from other EVM-compatible networks. Founded in July 2021 by Scott Bayless and Todd Mortenson, Autheo opened its public Testnet in 2025 and launched Mainnet in 2026.

    For more information, visit autheo.com and follow Autheo on X at @Autheo_Network. Find the Media Kit at mediakit.autheo.com

    Contact

    Marketing & Media Relations
    Ryan Teigen
    Autheo LLC
    ryan@autheo.com
    608-713-1028

  • Autheo Introduces the Internet Operating System: A Decentralized Coordination Layer for Web, Blockchain, & AI

    Sheridan, USA / Wyoming, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    Five years in the making, Autheo is launching its decentralized operating system on Mainnet — after public testnet adoption surpassed 1.8 million wallets, nearly 1 million smart contracts, and 8.8 million transactions.

    Autheo today formally introduced its decentralized operating system to the public: a coordination layer designed to let the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents interoperate natively as a single system. The company is now launching its Mainnet — the production environment for the network — after more than a year of public testnet activity.

    THE COORDINATION LAYER THE INTERNET NEVER HAD

    The networking wars of the 1980s and early 1990s settled a principle that has shaped the Internet ever since: interoperability comes from pragmatic, openly deployed protocols, not top-down frameworks. The standards that won — TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS — succeeded by being practical and deployable, and the modern Internet still rests on them. The blockchain era took a different path: each network optimized for its own internal consistency — its own security model, consensus mechanism, APIs, SDKs, and developer tooling — and the result has been a fragmented landscape of largely siloed chains. The rapid rise of AI agents now amplifies that fragmentation, as a growing population of autonomous actors needs to transact across Web, blockchain, and AI systems that were never designed to coordinate with one another.

    Protocols such as IBC, LayerZero, CCIP, Wormhole, and Axelar have made meaningful progress on chain-to-chain messaging and asset transfer — but those efforts operate at the bridging layer. Autheo addresses the problem from a different angle: a shared substrate where Web services, blockchain networks, and AI agents coordinate natively on a common identity, communications, execution, and infrastructure layer, rather than relying on bridges that pass messages between otherwise disconnected systems.

    At the same time, approximately three-quarters of business applications today are delivered as SaaS, and identity, storage, compute, payments, and messaging already run as distributed services across the Web. The Internet, in other words, has quietly taken on many of the functions of an operating system. What it has lacked is the layer that lets those services — together with blockchain networks and AI agents — interoperate by default, rather than through one-off, brittle integrations built per partner, per protocol, and per chain.

    Autheo’s purpose is to provide that coordination and execution layer. The Autheo OS exposes the standard functions one would expect of an operating system—identity, scheduling, messaging, state, compute, storage, and execution—as open, programmable services that any application, protocol, or agent can call. The objective is an integration substrate on which Web2 systems, Web3 protocols, and AI agents can transact and collaborate without needing to know which environment the counterparty is in. For autonomous AI agents specifically, Autheo is built around an on-chain, quantum-resistant trust and identity layer — designed so agents can hold credentials, sign transactions, and invoke services without depending on external systems or exposing private keys. The two design imperatives behind the project are simple: integration and interoperability.

    “We didn’t set out to build just another network,” said Scott Bayless, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “We set out to find the right relation between the ones we already have. A body has many parts. A city is many trades. The Internet today is many systems — each doing its work, none of them moving as one. With Mainnet now live, Autheo is the layer where the web, the chain, and the agent can finally work together.”

    FOUNDED BY LONG-TIME COLLABORATORS

    Autheo was founded in July 2021 by Todd Mortenson and Scott Bayless, long-time collaborators who have built and operated multiple ventures together over the past two decades.

    The founders shared a simple thesis: the next phase of the Internet will be defined less by any single technology — and more by the coordination layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI to operate as a single system. Much of what ultimately matters in technology tends to begin far from the loudest places — quietly, slowly, by those who would not have been the obvious choices.

    Guided by that vision, the founders and engineering leadership spent the project’s first several years researching networks, ecosystems, protocol design, digital identity, post-quantum security, and decentralized coordination before building Autheo from the ground up around four distinct architectural foundations: TheoID — Autheo’s W3C-compliant Decentralized Identifier (DID) implementation — as the native identity primitive for users, services, and AI agents; PQCNet, Autheo’s post-quantum communications and identity framework, built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205); a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability; and an integrated EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, operating as a Proof-of-Stake network with delegated staking and licensed validator eligibility, secured by CometBFT block finality (“Proof of Autheo”).

    Solidity smart contracts can be deployed natively on Autheo or migrated from existing EVM-compatible chains, providing developers with a familiar development environment while benefiting from native IBC interoperability across the broader blockchain ecosystem.

    The research and development underlying the platform has also resulted in an expanding portfolio of patent families covering core architectural innovations, reflecting the team’s long-term intellectual property strategy surrounding decentralized operating systems, digital identity, interoperability, post-quantum security, and related technologies.

    Network engineering and Autheo’s post-quantum security architecture are led by Chief Engineering Officer Kenneth Harper, who has overseen the design, architecture, and implementation of the platform through public testnet and into Mainnet launch. Supporting those efforts is a multidisciplinary organization spanning engineering, product, project management, quality assurance, infrastructure, operations, ecosystem development, developer support, business development, partnerships, marketing, global channels, finance, legal, compliance, and intellectual property. Autheo’s broader contributor base spans approximately 100 people across 25 countries — blockchain pioneers, Fortune 500 operators, and researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech. Independent security audits have been completed by Halborn (testnet) and CertiK (Mainnet).

    Autheo collaborates with leading infrastructure, security, and ecosystem partners — including Zeeve, InfStones, Hydrex, Halborn, CertiK, TrustSwap, Team.Finance, Utila, Ape Bond, Antier, EVU, among others — across validator and node operations, security audits, custody, token services, and ecosystem development.

    TESTNET ADOPTION HAS COMPOUNDED

    Autheo’s public testnet went live in 2025 and, over its first twelve months, attracted approximately 350,000 wallets and 60,000 smart contracts as developers stress-tested the network. Following the May 12, 2026, announcement of Mainnet Phase 1, adoption accelerated. In the roughly 45 days since, cumulative wallet addresses have grown more than 5x and smart contracts have grown more than 15x. As of today, cumulative testnet totals stand at:

    • 1,812,088 wallet addresses
    • 968,502 smart contracts

    (Figures per Autheo network data, June 24, 2026. Independently verifiable on the public testnet explorer: testnet-explorer.autheo.com · verified contracts.)

    Daily activity over the past month has averaged approximately 30,000 new wallet addresses and 20,000 new smart contracts. The Autheo testnet is now onboarding more wallets and deploying more contracts in a single day than it did across full months of its first year. Contract density at this stage is unusual for a Layer-1 testnet and reflects the breadth of developer use cases the team has supported across the build-out.

    “Mainnet is live,” said Todd Mortenson, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “The industry will be racing to retrofit post-quantum security ahead of NIST’s timeline — our developers won’t have to. We built PQC in from the ground up. One interface for Web services, on-chain protocols, and AI agents. One million human developers on-chain within three years. And the AI agents building alongside them? Orders of magnitude more. The coordination layer for that future is live today.”

    WHAT’S NEXT

    With the testnet validating the architecture and the Mainnet now launching, Autheo’s near-term focus is on expanding partnerships across the Web2, Web3, and AI communities and supporting builders deploying applications, agents, and protocols on the platform.

    Developer Access (Mainnet, Live Today):

    Testnet explorer (with verified-contract source): testnet-explorer.autheo.com

    For developers seeking an early path into the Mainnet ecosystem, the Core Node and Prime Node tiers remain available at commerce.autheo.com (settlement via ETH on Arbitrum). These programs provide eligibility for long-term THEO token emissions, enabling developers to begin accumulating THEO for building, deploying, and participating in the network as the ecosystem expands. The Sovereign Validator Node program (399 nodes total) has its first 275 slots fully subscribed; the remaining 124 are reserved for enterprise partners and ecosystem customers. A dedicated builder portal at autheolabs.com is anticipated to launch, providing additional THEO token and validator allocations for projects deploying on the network.

    THEO is anticipated to become available on Hydrex.fi in early July 2026, with additional exchange access expected to follow.

    Additional documentation ecosystem, security, infrastructure, and listing announcements are expected over the coming weeks.

    ABOUT AUTHEO

    Autheo is building the Internet operating system — a decentralized coordination and execution layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents to interoperate as a single system. The platform utilizes W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as its native identity framework and is anchored by PQCNet, Autheo’s quantum-resistant communications and identity infrastructure built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205). Operating alongside Autheo’s sovereign Cosmos-based Layer 0 and EVM-compatible Layer 1, PQCNet is designed to provide next-generation security for digital identity, communications, authentication, encryption, and trusted interactions across Web, blockchain, and AI ecosystems.

    Autheo integrates a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability and an EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, allowing developers to deploy Solidity smart contracts natively or migrate existing applications from other EVM-compatible networks. Founded in July 2021 by Scott Bayless and Todd Mortenson, Autheo opened its public Testnet in 2025 and launched Mainnet in 2026.

    For more information, visit autheo.com and follow Autheo on X at @Autheo_Network. Find the Media Kit at mediakit.autheo.com

    Contact

    Marketing & Media Relations
    Ryan Teigen
    Autheo LLC
    ryan@autheo.com
    608-713-1028

  • Autheo Introduces the Internet Operating System: A Decentralized Coordination Layer for Web, Blockchain, & AI

    Sheridan, USA / Wyoming, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    Five years in the making, Autheo is launching its decentralized operating system on Mainnet — after public testnet adoption surpassed 1.8 million wallets, nearly 1 million smart contracts, and 8.8 million transactions.

    Autheo today formally introduced its decentralized operating system to the public: a coordination layer designed to let the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents interoperate natively as a single system. The company is now launching its Mainnet — the production environment for the network — after more than a year of public testnet activity.

    THE COORDINATION LAYER THE INTERNET NEVER HAD

    The networking wars of the 1980s and early 1990s settled a principle that has shaped the Internet ever since: interoperability comes from pragmatic, openly deployed protocols, not top-down frameworks. The standards that won — TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS — succeeded by being practical and deployable, and the modern Internet still rests on them. The blockchain era took a different path: each network optimized for its own internal consistency — its own security model, consensus mechanism, APIs, SDKs, and developer tooling — and the result has been a fragmented landscape of largely siloed chains. The rapid rise of AI agents now amplifies that fragmentation, as a growing population of autonomous actors needs to transact across Web, blockchain, and AI systems that were never designed to coordinate with one another.

    Protocols such as IBC, LayerZero, CCIP, Wormhole, and Axelar have made meaningful progress on chain-to-chain messaging and asset transfer — but those efforts operate at the bridging layer. Autheo addresses the problem from a different angle: a shared substrate where Web services, blockchain networks, and AI agents coordinate natively on a common identity, communications, execution, and infrastructure layer, rather than relying on bridges that pass messages between otherwise disconnected systems.

    At the same time, approximately three-quarters of business applications today are delivered as SaaS, and identity, storage, compute, payments, and messaging already run as distributed services across the Web. The Internet, in other words, has quietly taken on many of the functions of an operating system. What it has lacked is the layer that lets those services — together with blockchain networks and AI agents — interoperate by default, rather than through one-off, brittle integrations built per partner, per protocol, and per chain.

    Autheo’s purpose is to provide that coordination and execution layer. The Autheo OS exposes the standard functions one would expect of an operating system—identity, scheduling, messaging, state, compute, storage, and execution—as open, programmable services that any application, protocol, or agent can call. The objective is an integration substrate on which Web2 systems, Web3 protocols, and AI agents can transact and collaborate without needing to know which environment the counterparty is in. For autonomous AI agents specifically, Autheo is built around an on-chain, quantum-resistant trust and identity layer — designed so agents can hold credentials, sign transactions, and invoke services without depending on external systems or exposing private keys. The two design imperatives behind the project are simple: integration and interoperability.

    “We didn’t set out to build just another network,” said Scott Bayless, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “We set out to find the right relation between the ones we already have. A body has many parts. A city is many trades. The Internet today is many systems — each doing its work, none of them moving as one. With Mainnet now live, Autheo is the layer where the web, the chain, and the agent can finally work together.”

    FOUNDED BY LONG-TIME COLLABORATORS

    Autheo was founded in July 2021 by Todd Mortenson and Scott Bayless, long-time collaborators who have built and operated multiple ventures together over the past two decades.

    The founders shared a simple thesis: the next phase of the Internet will be defined less by any single technology — and more by the coordination layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI to operate as a single system. Much of what ultimately matters in technology tends to begin far from the loudest places — quietly, slowly, by those who would not have been the obvious choices.

    Guided by that vision, the founders and engineering leadership spent the project’s first several years researching networks, ecosystems, protocol design, digital identity, post-quantum security, and decentralized coordination before building Autheo from the ground up around four distinct architectural foundations: TheoID — Autheo’s W3C-compliant Decentralized Identifier (DID) implementation — as the native identity primitive for users, services, and AI agents; PQCNet, Autheo’s post-quantum communications and identity framework, built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205); a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability; and an integrated EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, operating as a Proof-of-Stake network with delegated staking and licensed validator eligibility, secured by CometBFT block finality (“Proof of Autheo”).

    Solidity smart contracts can be deployed natively on Autheo or migrated from existing EVM-compatible chains, providing developers with a familiar development environment while benefiting from native IBC interoperability across the broader blockchain ecosystem.

    The research and development underlying the platform has also resulted in an expanding portfolio of patent families covering core architectural innovations, reflecting the team’s long-term intellectual property strategy surrounding decentralized operating systems, digital identity, interoperability, post-quantum security, and related technologies.

    Network engineering and Autheo’s post-quantum security architecture are led by Chief Engineering Officer Kenneth Harper, who has overseen the design, architecture, and implementation of the platform through public testnet and into Mainnet launch. Supporting those efforts is a multidisciplinary organization spanning engineering, product, project management, quality assurance, infrastructure, operations, ecosystem development, developer support, business development, partnerships, marketing, global channels, finance, legal, compliance, and intellectual property. Autheo’s broader contributor base spans approximately 100 people across 25 countries — blockchain pioneers, Fortune 500 operators, and researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech. Independent security audits have been completed by Halborn (testnet) and CertiK (Mainnet).

    Autheo collaborates with leading infrastructure, security, and ecosystem partners — including Zeeve, InfStones, Hydrex, Halborn, CertiK, TrustSwap, Team.Finance, Utila, Ape Bond, Antier, EVU, among others — across validator and node operations, security audits, custody, token services, and ecosystem development.

    TESTNET ADOPTION HAS COMPOUNDED

    Autheo’s public testnet went live in 2025 and, over its first twelve months, attracted approximately 350,000 wallets and 60,000 smart contracts as developers stress-tested the network. Following the May 12, 2026, announcement of Mainnet Phase 1, adoption accelerated. In the roughly 45 days since, cumulative wallet addresses have grown more than 5x and smart contracts have grown more than 15x. As of today, cumulative testnet totals stand at:

    • 1,812,088 wallet addresses
    • 968,502 smart contracts

    (Figures per Autheo network data, June 24, 2026. Independently verifiable on the public testnet explorer: testnet-explorer.autheo.com · verified contracts.)

    Daily activity over the past month has averaged approximately 30,000 new wallet addresses and 20,000 new smart contracts. The Autheo testnet is now onboarding more wallets and deploying more contracts in a single day than it did across full months of its first year. Contract density at this stage is unusual for a Layer-1 testnet and reflects the breadth of developer use cases the team has supported across the build-out.

    “Mainnet is live,” said Todd Mortenson, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “The industry will be racing to retrofit post-quantum security ahead of NIST’s timeline — our developers won’t have to. We built PQC in from the ground up. One interface for Web services, on-chain protocols, and AI agents. One million human developers on-chain within three years. And the AI agents building alongside them? Orders of magnitude more. The coordination layer for that future is live today.”

    WHAT’S NEXT

    With the testnet validating the architecture and the Mainnet now launching, Autheo’s near-term focus is on expanding partnerships across the Web2, Web3, and AI communities and supporting builders deploying applications, agents, and protocols on the platform.

    Developer Access (Mainnet, Live Today):

    Testnet explorer (with verified-contract source): testnet-explorer.autheo.com

    For developers seeking an early path into the Mainnet ecosystem, the Core Node and Prime Node tiers remain available at commerce.autheo.com (settlement via ETH on Arbitrum). These programs provide eligibility for long-term THEO token emissions, enabling developers to begin accumulating THEO for building, deploying, and participating in the network as the ecosystem expands. The Sovereign Validator Node program (399 nodes total) has its first 275 slots fully subscribed; the remaining 124 are reserved for enterprise partners and ecosystem customers. A dedicated builder portal at autheolabs.com is anticipated to launch, providing additional THEO token and validator allocations for projects deploying on the network.

    THEO is anticipated to become available on Hydrex.fi in early July 2026, with additional exchange access expected to follow.

    Additional documentation ecosystem, security, infrastructure, and listing announcements are expected over the coming weeks.

    ABOUT AUTHEO

    Autheo is building the Internet operating system — a decentralized coordination and execution layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents to interoperate as a single system. The platform utilizes W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as its native identity framework and is anchored by PQCNet, Autheo’s quantum-resistant communications and identity infrastructure built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205). Operating alongside Autheo’s sovereign Cosmos-based Layer 0 and EVM-compatible Layer 1, PQCNet is designed to provide next-generation security for digital identity, communications, authentication, encryption, and trusted interactions across Web, blockchain, and AI ecosystems.

    Autheo integrates a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability and an EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, allowing developers to deploy Solidity smart contracts natively or migrate existing applications from other EVM-compatible networks. Founded in July 2021 by Scott Bayless and Todd Mortenson, Autheo opened its public Testnet in 2025 and launched Mainnet in 2026.

    For more information, visit autheo.com and follow Autheo on X at @Autheo_Network. Find the Media Kit at mediakit.autheo.com

    Contact

    Marketing & Media Relations
    Ryan Teigen
    Autheo LLC
    ryan@autheo.com
    608-713-1028

  • Autheo Introduces the Internet Operating System: A Decentralized Coordination Layer for Web, Blockchain, & AI

    Sheridan, USA / Wyoming, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    Five years in the making, Autheo is launching its decentralized operating system on Mainnet — after public testnet adoption surpassed 1.8 million wallets, nearly 1 million smart contracts, and 8.8 million transactions.

    Autheo today formally introduced its decentralized operating system to the public: a coordination layer designed to let the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents interoperate natively as a single system. The company is now launching its Mainnet — the production environment for the network — after more than a year of public testnet activity.

    THE COORDINATION LAYER THE INTERNET NEVER HAD

    The networking wars of the 1980s and early 1990s settled a principle that has shaped the Internet ever since: interoperability comes from pragmatic, openly deployed protocols, not top-down frameworks. The standards that won — TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, TLS — succeeded by being practical and deployable, and the modern Internet still rests on them. The blockchain era took a different path: each network optimized for its own internal consistency — its own security model, consensus mechanism, APIs, SDKs, and developer tooling — and the result has been a fragmented landscape of largely siloed chains. The rapid rise of AI agents now amplifies that fragmentation, as a growing population of autonomous actors needs to transact across Web, blockchain, and AI systems that were never designed to coordinate with one another.

    Protocols such as IBC, LayerZero, CCIP, Wormhole, and Axelar have made meaningful progress on chain-to-chain messaging and asset transfer — but those efforts operate at the bridging layer. Autheo addresses the problem from a different angle: a shared substrate where Web services, blockchain networks, and AI agents coordinate natively on a common identity, communications, execution, and infrastructure layer, rather than relying on bridges that pass messages between otherwise disconnected systems.

    At the same time, approximately three-quarters of business applications today are delivered as SaaS, and identity, storage, compute, payments, and messaging already run as distributed services across the Web. The Internet, in other words, has quietly taken on many of the functions of an operating system. What it has lacked is the layer that lets those services — together with blockchain networks and AI agents — interoperate by default, rather than through one-off, brittle integrations built per partner, per protocol, and per chain.

    Autheo’s purpose is to provide that coordination and execution layer. The Autheo OS exposes the standard functions one would expect of an operating system—identity, scheduling, messaging, state, compute, storage, and execution—as open, programmable services that any application, protocol, or agent can call. The objective is an integration substrate on which Web2 systems, Web3 protocols, and AI agents can transact and collaborate without needing to know which environment the counterparty is in. For autonomous AI agents specifically, Autheo is built around an on-chain, quantum-resistant trust and identity layer — designed so agents can hold credentials, sign transactions, and invoke services without depending on external systems or exposing private keys. The two design imperatives behind the project are simple: integration and interoperability.

    “We didn’t set out to build just another network,” said Scott Bayless, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “We set out to find the right relation between the ones we already have. A body has many parts. A city is many trades. The Internet today is many systems — each doing its work, none of them moving as one. With Mainnet now live, Autheo is the layer where the web, the chain, and the agent can finally work together.”

    FOUNDED BY LONG-TIME COLLABORATORS

    Autheo was founded in July 2021 by Todd Mortenson and Scott Bayless, long-time collaborators who have built and operated multiple ventures together over the past two decades.

    The founders shared a simple thesis: the next phase of the Internet will be defined less by any single technology — and more by the coordination layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI to operate as a single system. Much of what ultimately matters in technology tends to begin far from the loudest places — quietly, slowly, by those who would not have been the obvious choices.

    Guided by that vision, the founders and engineering leadership spent the project’s first several years researching networks, ecosystems, protocol design, digital identity, post-quantum security, and decentralized coordination before building Autheo from the ground up around four distinct architectural foundations: TheoID — Autheo’s W3C-compliant Decentralized Identifier (DID) implementation — as the native identity primitive for users, services, and AI agents; PQCNet, Autheo’s post-quantum communications and identity framework, built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205); a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability; and an integrated EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, operating as a Proof-of-Stake network with delegated staking and licensed validator eligibility, secured by CometBFT block finality (“Proof of Autheo”).

    Solidity smart contracts can be deployed natively on Autheo or migrated from existing EVM-compatible chains, providing developers with a familiar development environment while benefiting from native IBC interoperability across the broader blockchain ecosystem.

    The research and development underlying the platform has also resulted in an expanding portfolio of patent families covering core architectural innovations, reflecting the team’s long-term intellectual property strategy surrounding decentralized operating systems, digital identity, interoperability, post-quantum security, and related technologies.

    Network engineering and Autheo’s post-quantum security architecture are led by Chief Engineering Officer Kenneth Harper, who has overseen the design, architecture, and implementation of the platform through public testnet and into Mainnet launch. Supporting those efforts is a multidisciplinary organization spanning engineering, product, project management, quality assurance, infrastructure, operations, ecosystem development, developer support, business development, partnerships, marketing, global channels, finance, legal, compliance, and intellectual property. Autheo’s broader contributor base spans approximately 100 people across 25 countries — blockchain pioneers, Fortune 500 operators, and researchers from institutions including MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Caltech. Independent security audits have been completed by Halborn (testnet) and CertiK (Mainnet).

    Autheo collaborates with leading infrastructure, security, and ecosystem partners — including Zeeve, InfStones, Hydrex, Halborn, CertiK, TrustSwap, Team.Finance, Utila, Ape Bond, Antier, EVU, among others — across validator and node operations, security audits, custody, token services, and ecosystem development.

    TESTNET ADOPTION HAS COMPOUNDED

    Autheo’s public testnet went live in 2025 and, over its first twelve months, attracted approximately 350,000 wallets and 60,000 smart contracts as developers stress-tested the network. Following the May 12, 2026, announcement of Mainnet Phase 1, adoption accelerated. In the roughly 45 days since, cumulative wallet addresses have grown more than 5x and smart contracts have grown more than 15x. As of today, cumulative testnet totals stand at:

    • 1,812,088 wallet addresses
    • 968,502 smart contracts

    (Figures per Autheo network data, June 24, 2026. Independently verifiable on the public testnet explorer: testnet-explorer.autheo.com · verified contracts.)

    Daily activity over the past month has averaged approximately 30,000 new wallet addresses and 20,000 new smart contracts. The Autheo testnet is now onboarding more wallets and deploying more contracts in a single day than it did across full months of its first year. Contract density at this stage is unusual for a Layer-1 testnet and reflects the breadth of developer use cases the team has supported across the build-out.

    “Mainnet is live,” said Todd Mortenson, Managing Director and co-founder of Autheo. “The industry will be racing to retrofit post-quantum security ahead of NIST’s timeline — our developers won’t have to. We built PQC in from the ground up. One interface for Web services, on-chain protocols, and AI agents. One million human developers on-chain within three years. And the AI agents building alongside them? Orders of magnitude more. The coordination layer for that future is live today.”

    WHAT’S NEXT

    With the testnet validating the architecture and the Mainnet now launching, Autheo’s near-term focus is on expanding partnerships across the Web2, Web3, and AI communities and supporting builders deploying applications, agents, and protocols on the platform.

    Developer Access (Mainnet, Live Today):

    Testnet explorer (with verified-contract source): testnet-explorer.autheo.com

    For developers seeking an early path into the Mainnet ecosystem, the Core Node and Prime Node tiers remain available at commerce.autheo.com (settlement via ETH on Arbitrum). These programs provide eligibility for long-term THEO token emissions, enabling developers to begin accumulating THEO for building, deploying, and participating in the network as the ecosystem expands. The Sovereign Validator Node program (399 nodes total) has its first 275 slots fully subscribed; the remaining 124 are reserved for enterprise partners and ecosystem customers. A dedicated builder portal at autheolabs.com is anticipated to launch, providing additional THEO token and validator allocations for projects deploying on the network.

    THEO is anticipated to become available on Hydrex.fi in early July 2026, with additional exchange access expected to follow.

    Additional documentation ecosystem, security, infrastructure, and listing announcements are expected over the coming weeks.

    ABOUT AUTHEO

    Autheo is building the Internet operating system — a decentralized coordination and execution layer that enables the traditional Web, blockchain networks, and AI agents to interoperate as a single system. The platform utilizes W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) as its native identity framework and is anchored by PQCNet, Autheo’s quantum-resistant communications and identity infrastructure built upon NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography, including ML-KEM (FIPS 203), ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and SLH-DSA (FIPS 205). Operating alongside Autheo’s sovereign Cosmos-based Layer 0 and EVM-compatible Layer 1, PQCNet is designed to provide next-generation security for digital identity, communications, authentication, encryption, and trusted interactions across Web, blockchain, and AI ecosystems.

    Autheo integrates a sovereign Cosmos SDK Layer 0 with native IBC interoperability and an EVM-compatible Layer 1 execution environment, allowing developers to deploy Solidity smart contracts natively or migrate existing applications from other EVM-compatible networks. Founded in July 2021 by Scott Bayless and Todd Mortenson, Autheo opened its public Testnet in 2025 and launched Mainnet in 2026.

    For more information, visit autheo.com and follow Autheo on X at @Autheo_Network. Find the Media Kit at mediakit.autheo.com

    Contact

    Marketing & Media Relations
    Ryan Teigen
    Autheo LLC
    ryan@autheo.com
    608-713-1028

  • MEXC Lists Ondo’s Tokenized Strategy Preferred Stock on Spot Market

    Victoria, Seychelles, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    MEXC, a pioneer in 0-fee digital asset trading, today announced the listing of Ondo’s tokenized Strategy’s preferred stock on its spot market, further expanding its tokenized U.S. stock offerings.

    STRCON tracks Strategy Pref (STRC), Strategy’s preferred stock. The company formerly known as MicroStrategy, Inc., is the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, with holdings of 847,363 BTC as of June 21, 2026, according to company filings. The STRCON/USDT spot trading pair will be listed at 14:00 (UTC) on June 30, 2026. Deposits opened earlier the same day at 08:00 (UTC). Full listing details are available in MEXC’s official announcement.

    Ondo Global Markets is a tokenization platform focused on bringing real-world assets on-chain. It provides non-U.S. investors with instant access to tokenized U.S. stocks, ETFs, and other securities. Ondo Global Markets surpassed $1 billion in total value locked in May 2026 and accounts for more than 70% of the tokenized equity issuer market, according to RWA.xyz data. MEXC’s ongoing collaboration with Ondo continues to expand access to the U.S. stock market for users through tokenized assets.

    As a one-stop trading platform, MEXC is committed to providing users with diverse access to global markets. Beyond Ondo’s tokenized U.S. equities, MEXC also offers “RealStocks,” a product that allows users to hold real share ownership and dividends within the crypto trading environment they already use.

    About MEXC

    MEXC is the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange, trusted by more than 40 million users across 170+ markets. Built on a user-first philosophy, MEXC offers industry-leading 0-fee trading and access to over 3,000 digital assets. As the Gateway to Infinite Opportunities, MEXC provides a single platform where users can easily trade cryptocurrencies alongside tokenized assets, including stocks, ETFs, commodities, and precious metals.

    MEXC Official Website｜ X ｜ Telegram ｜How to Sign Up on MEXC

    For media inquiries, please contact MEXC PR team: media@mexc.com

    Risk Disclaimer:

    This content does not constitute investment advice. Given the highly volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors are encouraged to carefully assess market fluctuations, project fundamentals, and potential financial risks before making any trading decisions.

    Contact

    MEXC PR team
    media@mexc.com

  • MEXC Lists Ondo’s Tokenized Strategy Preferred Stock on Spot Market

    Victoria, Seychelles, June 30th, 2026, Chainwire

    MEXC, a pioneer in 0-fee digital asset trading, today announced the listing of Ondo’s tokenized Strategy’s preferred stock on its spot market, further expanding its tokenized U.S. stock offerings.

    STRCON tracks Strategy Pref (STRC), Strategy’s preferred stock. The company formerly known as MicroStrategy, Inc., is the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin, with holdings of 847,363 BTC as of June 21, 2026, according to company filings. The STRCON/USDT spot trading pair will be listed at 14:00 (UTC) on June 30, 2026. Deposits opened earlier the same day at 08:00 (UTC). Full listing details are available in MEXC’s official announcement.

    Ondo Global Markets is a tokenization platform focused on bringing real-world assets on-chain. It provides non-U.S. investors with instant access to tokenized U.S. stocks, ETFs, and other securities. Ondo Global Markets surpassed $1 billion in total value locked in May 2026 and accounts for more than 70% of the tokenized equity issuer market, according to RWA.xyz data. MEXC’s ongoing collaboration with Ondo continues to expand access to the U.S. stock market for users through tokenized assets.

    As a one-stop trading platform, MEXC is committed to providing users with diverse access to global markets. Beyond Ondo’s tokenized U.S. equities, MEXC also offers “RealStocks,” a product that allows users to hold real share ownership and dividends within the crypto trading environment they already use.

    About MEXC

    MEXC is the world’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchange, trusted by more than 40 million users across 170+ markets. Built on a user-first philosophy, MEXC offers industry-leading 0-fee trading and access to over 3,000 digital assets. As the Gateway to Infinite Opportunities, MEXC provides a single platform where users can easily trade cryptocurrencies alongside tokenized assets, including stocks, ETFs, commodities, and precious metals.

    MEXC Official Website｜ X ｜ Telegram ｜How to Sign Up on MEXC

    For media inquiries, please contact MEXC PR team: media@mexc.com

    Risk Disclaimer:

    This content does not constitute investment advice. Given the highly volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors are encouraged to carefully assess market fluctuations, project fundamentals, and potential financial risks before making any trading decisions.

    Contact

    MEXC PR team
    media@mexc.com