Avail has acquired fellow infrastructure player Arcana. This acquisition incorporates Arcana’s chain abstraction SDK into the Avail stack, transforming a competitor into a vital part of its multichain strategy.
Summary
- Avail has acquired chain abstraction protocol Arcana, integrating its SDK and team into the Avail stack.
- The acquisition accelerates the Avail Nexus mainnet launch, set for Q4 2025.
- Arcana’s XAR token holders can exchange their tokens for AVAIL at a 4:1 ratio, centralizing multichain activities under a single token.
In an announcement on August 27, modular infrastructure firm Avail revealed its acquisition of chain abstraction protocol Arcana.
The deal, terms of which were not fully disclosed, will see Avail absorb Arcana’s core technology, including its wallet, authentication, and multi-party computation frameworks, and integrate its team. This strategic move enhances Avail’s Nexus unification layer, accelerating its mainnet roadmap targeted for Q4 2025.
By merging Avail’s modular infrastructure with Arcana’s chain abstraction tools, the platform aims to provide a more cohesive, seamless experience across EVM, ZK, Optimistic, and sovereign chains.
Forging the Nexus economy and multichain vision
For Avail, the Arcana acquisition is the key to realizing its overarching vision: the Nexus Economy. This concept positions the AVAIL token as the central economic engine for a smoothly interconnected multichain environment.
The incorporation of Arcana’s established technology, which supports over 2.5 million wallets and has facilitated over 5 million transactions, provides the essential user-facing components needed to actualize this vision. It propels the project from theoretical scalability into the realm of practical user engagement.
The immediate beneficiary is Avail Nexus, the unification layer designed to navigate the fragmented blockchain landscape. By embedding Arcana’s chain abstraction SDK, wallet, and authentication frameworks, Nexus evolves from a connectivity protocol into a comprehensive user experience platform.
This empowers developers in major ecosystems, from Ethereum and Polygon to Arbitrum and Base, to create applications that function natively across chains without users having to manually switch networks, manage gas fees, or deal with cumbersome bridges.
Who benefits?
Avail’s new structure offers clear advantages for various market segments. As per the press release, developers receive a “build once, deploy everywhere” framework, which could significantly reduce development time and complexity. End users gain a seamless experience, interacting with any asset across chains through a single, simplified interface.
Critically for institutional adoption, merging Avail’s zero-knowledge proof backends with Arcana’s multi-party computation technology creates a strong security framework for managing high-value digital assets, tokenized securities, and real-world assets, addressing essential needs for compliance and privacy.
Additionally, the deal initiates a significant tokenomics consolidation. The Avail Foundation has acquired the entire supply of Arcana’s XAR token, allowing holders to swap for AVAIL at a 4:1 ratio. This move strategically eliminates a competing token and directs all economic activity towards AVAIL, which is now set to function as the exclusive medium for securing the network, aligning liquidity incentives, and facilitating cross-chain execution.
Arcana contributed a respectable $5.5 million in funding from investors like Digital Currency Group and Republic. Avail, emerging from Polygon, enters the merger with a substantial $75 million funding from notable investors such as Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Dragonfly Capital.
