Optimum Raises $11M to Build a 'Memory Layer' for Blockchains

Blockchains, by design, are stateless. Each transaction or smart contract execution is isolated from the others. This means that smart contracts cannot “remember” previous interactions unless they explicitly store information on-chain.

In the burgeoning realm of decentralized finance (DeFi), applications could greatly benefit from a memory layer to store a user’s staking history, balance, or even preferences. This would make it much easier for the users to track and interact with their portfolio.

However, Blockchains, by design, are stateless. Each transaction or smart contract execution is isolated from the others. This means that smart contracts cannot “remember” previous interactions unless they explicitly store information on-chain. But this can be inefficient and costly.

Now, a Web3 infrastructure startup, Optimum, is setting out to build a “memory layer” that will enable instant and permissionless access to historical on-chain data across all major blockchains.

The startup has already raised $11 million in seed funding from prominent crypto investors.

The round was co-led by Maven 11, 1kx, and Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Hashed, Robot Ventures, and Inflection.xyz, among others.

The investment will be used to expand the team, build out developer tools, and launch the core infrastructure of Optimum’s memory layer across multiple ecosystems.

Can Optimum Solve Blockchain’s ‘Amnesia Problem’?

Most dApps today rely on third-party indexers or off-chain solutions to access older states of dApps and smart contracts. This ends up creating bottlenecks, points of failure, and a lack of verifiability.

Optimum aims to address what it calls the “amnesia problem” of blockchains with a composable memory layer that will allow developers and smart contracts to fetch any historical data quickly and trustlessly.

Moreover, without historical memory, it becomes harder to detect suspicious behavior like sandwich attacks, MEV patterns, or recurring exploits.

Web3, our “world computer” lacks a high-performance memory layer. Like any computer, memory is critical for blockchains to store, access, and update data efficiently.

Instead of a proper memory architecture, blockchains currently rely on a patchwork of best-effort solutions…pic.twitter.com/2gghJx7KID

— Optimum (@get_optimum) April 15, 2025

Optimum’s memory layer will act as an abstraction over multiple blockchains, storing compressed and verifiable summaries of historical state data. It will use advanced cryptographic techniques—such as zero-knowledge proofs and succinct data commitments—to ensure data integrity and composability.

This will allow developers to ask questions like “What was the ETH balance of this address on June 1, 2021?” directly on-chain without relying on centralized APIs from Etherscan or The Graph.

It aims to provide modern computing-type storage capabilities to Blockchains. For this, it is developing a RAM layer called DeRAM. This layer would provide real-time read/write access to Blockchain state for cheap yet fast storage capabilities.

The startup’s memory layer is designed to work across Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, and other major Layer-1 and Layer-2 chains, positioning Optimum as a universal data availability protocol.

Co-founded and led by MIT Professor Muriel Medard, its core lies in Random Liner Network Coding (RLNC). This data coding pioneering idea transforms data into coded packets. She recently released a video explaining the whole concept and her vision.