Introduction: From Definition to Leadership
2025 marked the year Nexus Chain defined itself. We successfully transformed the vision of zero-gas on-chain matching and AI-driven trading from theory into production-grade infrastructure. This system now operates at scale, supports bridge-free cross-chain execution, high-frequency AI interactions, and early RWA settlement, all with zero security incidents.
This progress is grounded in four core technical pillars we have consistently upheld: end-user experience, extreme performance, verifiable fairness, and native support for AI.
In 2026, we will build on this foundation and drive a decisive transition from a high-performance blockchain to an AI-native financial infrastructure. Our focus will be on pushing performance limits, improving execution quality, and strengthening infrastructure resilience.
1. Core Objectives for 2026
Vision Positioning
The definitive on-chain infrastructure for AI-driven and quantitative trading.
Quantitative Targets
- Throughput
- General transaction processing: 20,000+ TPS
- Dedicated matching throughput: 500,000+ OPS (orders per second)
- Finality
- Transaction finality under 800 milliseconds
- Best-case finality reaching 300 milliseconds
- Global Access Latency
- Reduce order submission latency to the latest block to under 100 milliseconds globally through an edge computing node network
2. Core Technology Evolution
2.1 Fairness and Security Enhancements
- Fair Sequencing Service (FSS) at the consensus layer: Enforced at the protocol level to eliminate malicious transaction reordering by block producers and ensure fair transaction inclusion.
- Transaction Privacy Pool (TPP): An optional and compliant privacy solution for institutions and large traders, while maintaining fully transparent on-chain settlement.
2.2 Unified Cross-Chain Liquidity Layer
- Launch of the Nexus Bridge Hub:
- A secure cross-chain communication layer based on light client verification.
- The goal is to allow AI agents and trading strategies deployed on Nexus to securely and seamlessly manage assets across major blockchains, forming a unified cross-chain liquidity view and execution interface.
2.3 Next-Generation Nodes and Execution Engine
- Development of the Nexus Core high-performance execution client: Built in Rust with a financial-computation-optimized execution environment (NVM).
- Real-time transaction dependency analysis and dynamic scheduling: Laying the foundation for fully parallel execution.
- Full node performance improvements
- State query performance improved by 50 percent
- Historical data archival efficiency improved by 70 percent
- Lightweight validation nodes for AI agents: Enabling AI agents to perform lightweight state verification without running full nodes.
2.4 Specialized Architecture for AI and On-Chain Matching
- Parallel Order Matching Engine (POME)
- Enables parallel processing of tens of thousands of non-conflicting orders within a single block.
- Uses explicitly declared memory domains to safely parallelize order matching and settlement.
- Targeting an order-of-magnitude increase in on-chain order book throughput.
- Agentverse Framework Upgrades
- Verifiable AI inference proofs (ZK-AI Proofs): Allow AI trading decisions made using compliant models to be verifiable, improving transparency and trust.
- Secure inter-agent collaboration protocols: Support multiple AI agents forming decentralized autonomous organizations for joint asset management and strategy execution.
- On-chain reputation system: Establishes credible performance records and capability labels for AI agents.
- Nexus DB scalable state storage: A layered sharding and columnar storage architecture designed to maintain consistently low transaction latency even as state size grows exponentially.
3. Looking Ahead: The Autonomous Finance Chain (2026 - 2028)
We are designing the next generation Autonomous Finance Chain (AFC) to support an AI-driven, near real-time global financial system.
Long-Term Goals
- Million-level TPS: Achieved through sharded execution and hybrid consensus combining on-chain consensus with off-chain proofs.
- Intelligent routing network: The chain gains market awareness and dynamically routes transactions to the lowest-cost and highest-liquidity venues, whether on Nexus mainnet, Layer 2s, or other blockchains.
- Full-chain AI operating system: Native on-chain services for AI agents including risk control, compliance, and strategy backtesting, treating AI as a first-class participant of the network.
- Best-in-class developer experience: A complete toolchain from strategy backtesting and simulation to one-click deployment, enabling developers to build complex on-chain financial products with Web2-level ease.
4. Roadmap Execution Principles
This roadmap is grounded in real transaction peaks and AI workloads already processed by the network, not abstract theory. Its purpose is to deliver the level of reliability users and developers already expect, while supporting the next wave of AI-driven on-chain finance.
Core Principles
- Backward compatibility: All upgrades ensure smooth compatibility with existing contracts and ecosystem components.
- Phased delivery: Major features will be rolled out in stages on testnet, accompanied by comprehensive audits and bug bounty programs.
- Community governance: Key technical decisions and upgrade parameters will be proposed and decided through community governance.
In 2026, Nexus Chain will complete its critical leap from a high-performance blockchain to an AI-native financial infrastructure.
We are building a new dimension where every transaction is frictionless, every strategy is executed with precision, and every AI competes on an equal financial playing field.
On Nexus, the future is already unfolding. Let’s build it together.
Nexus Chain Core Development TeamJanuary 2026
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