Skale
also invests · investor profile5 known investors
SKALE is an open-source, Ethereum-native multichain network offering zero-gas-fee, high-throughput blockchains for decentralized applications.
Also known as SKALE Network · SKL
Founders & leadership
Investors · 5
Company profile
researched Aug 2026SKALE (SKALE Network) is an open-source, Ethereum-native multichain network designed to scale Ethereum decentralized applications. It is composed of multiple application-specific and hub chains that pool security across a shared validator set, with each SKALE chain supported by 16 randomly selected and periodically rotated validator nodes operating under Byzantine Fault Tolerance that tolerates up to one-third faulty or malicious nodes. A single validator node can run concurrently on up to eight chains, and node assignment rotation is used to resist collusion. The network runs on proof-of-stake.
The network's stated technical characteristics include zero gas fees for developers and end users, gasless transactions, instant finality equal to block time, an average throughput of roughly 800 transactions per second per SKALE chain with no theoretical network-wide cap, and a 268 million block gas limit. Supporting components include a native bridge with an average of 18-second finality between chains and support for ERC-20, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 plus arbitrary data messaging, and a native decentralized oracle able to read smart contracts on other EVM-compatible chains and access public off-chain data.
More recently the project positions itself around scaling AI agents and privacy-oriented onchain applications, using BITE (Blockchain Integrated Threshold Encryption), an extension of its consensus protocol that encrypts onchain actions at the consensus layer to protect agent strategies, user data and order flow while retaining public verifiability. SKALE Expand is described as extending these capabilities into other EVM ecosystems, and the network supports protocols such as x402, AP2 and ERC-8004 and tools such as MachinePay for autonomous agent payments for APIs, data and compute.
Founding story
SKALE Network was co-founded by Jack O'Holleran and Stan Kladko. O'Holleran, the co-founder and CEO, is a technology entrepreneur focused on blockchain and decentralized systems who previously co-founded the life sciences company Aktana in 2008, where he remains a strategic advisor; earlier in his career he was an account executive at Good Technology and later worked in Motorola's business development and product strategy division. Kladko holds a Ph.D. in physics and spent 16 years as a technology executive in Silicon Valley, having co-founded several companies including Galactic Exchange and Cloudessa.
Traction
The project describes handling millions of transactions per week across its multichain network. Its main skale-network GitHub repository had 162 stars, 52 forks and 1,230 commits. The SKL token had a circulating supply of about 6.19 billion of a 6.34 billion total and 7 billion maximum supply, about 31,170 holders, 24-hour trading volume of roughly $2.84 million, and a CertiK rating of 4.3.
Latest developments
SKALE's current positioning emphasizes infrastructure for AI agents and privacy-preserving onchain applications through the BITE threshold-encryption protocol, gasless transactions and instant finality, plus SKALE Expand for extending these capabilities into other EVM ecosystems and support for agent payment standards and tools including x402, AP2, ERC-8004 and MachinePay.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography
Market position
SKALE is categorized in public market data under gaming, DePIN and smart contract sectors, and its SKL token ranked #594 by market capitalization at approximately $23.69 million with a fully diluted valuation of about $26.78 million and roughly 31,170 holders at the time of observation.
Technology
SKALE is EVM-compatible with a custom EVM implementation written in C++, supporting Solidity up to 0.8.24 and EVM compiler versions up to Shanghai. Core open-source components include SKALE Consensus (a C++ consensus engine), SKALED (the proof-of-stake blockchain client compatible with EVM, Solidity, MetaMask and Truffle), SKALE Manager (smart contracts orchestrating nodes, validators, chains, the SKALE token, distributed key generation and BLS signature verification), SKALE Admin (containerized node orchestration), SGX Wallet (an Intel SGX-based key management server where keys never leave the enclave unencrypted), the Interchain Messaging Agent (IMA) bridging and message transport layer, and libBLS, a C++ library implementing BLS signatures, threshold encryption and distributed key generation used for BFT consensus, verifiable distributed randomness, interchain messaging and transaction protection. The BITE protocol extends the consensus protocol with encrypted transaction processing and is accessible via the bite.ts TypeScript library, which encrypts transaction data using BLS public keys. Chains support any EVM-compatible block explorer and by default run SKALE Blockscout; the SKALE Portal provides asset and data transfer between SKALE chains and Ethereum mainnet, an SKL staking interface, and developer resources such as chain IDs and RPC endpoints.
Go-to-market
Developers and protocols building high-performance decentralized applications, particularly in gaming, AI agents and other computationally intensive or microtransaction-heavy use cases, as well as SKL token holders, delegators and validator node operators.
Geography
Co-founder backgrounds are tied to San Francisco Bay Area technology companies; documentation is published in English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
Compiled by commissioned research from 5 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 3
launches, deals, and filingsThe SKL token recorded an all-time high price of $1.22 on 12 March 2021.
A whitepaper released in July 2020 set out the SKL token allocation: 33% to validator rewards, 28.1% to delegators, 16% to the broader founding team, 10% to the SKALE Foundation, 7.7% to the protocol development fund, 4% to the core team pool and 1.3% to the ecosystem fund. Total supply at network launch was 4.1 billion SKL, with a fixed maximum supply of 7 billion.
The first exchanges to list the SKL token included Huobi, Binance and Uniswap.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 5
primary sources listed
- SKALE price today, SKL to USD live price, marketcap and chart | CoinMarketCapcoinmarketcap.com · web
5 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Skale do?
- SKALE is an open-source, Ethereum-native multichain network offering zero-gas-fee, high-throughput blockchains for decentralized applications.
- Who founded Skale?
- Skale was founded by Jack O'Holleran.
- Who are Skale's investors?
- Skale's investors include Arrington Capital, Narcissus Ventures, Oyster Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital, Multicoin Capital.