Relay Raises Series B and Launches the Relay Chain to Scale Interoperability Infrastructure

Today we're announcing our Series B led by Archetype and Union Square Ventures alongside the release of the Relay Chain.

The Onchain Money Stack

Money is moving onchain. Stablecoins now settle over $30T annually, with payment volumes alone reaching ~$390 billion in 2025 and growing rapidly. Cross-border payments and global commerce are migrating to blockchain rails because they're faster, cheaper, and programmable.

But money that moves onchain enters a fragmented world. Dozens of chains, each with different assets, liquidity, and standards. This fragmentation isn't going away. We won't have one chain for the same reason we don't have one bank or one currency. The opportunity is too large, and the needs are too varied.

What should feel like one global system instead feels like many disconnected ones. The only way to cross the chasm is for crypto to feel simple.

The question is: what infrastructure makes fragmentation invisible?

The Stack

Here's what should be simple: a user holds USDC in their Solana wallet and wants to buy from a merchant using Coinbase Commerce that settles on Base. To make that work, you need four layers:

Interfaces — where users interact with their money. Wallets, apps, neobanks.

Orchestration — where transactions are routed and risk management is handled. Payment processors, stablecoin APIs.

Interoperability — where value moves across chains. The connective tissue that lets a user on Solana transact on Base without thinking about it.

Settlement — where transactions finalize. The blockchains themselves.

Each layer depends on the others. Interfaces need orchestration to handle complexity. Orchestration needs interoperability to reach users wherever they are. Interoperability needs settlement to finalize transactions.

Relay is the interoperability layer.

What We've Built

Relay is interoperability infrastructure that enables cheap, fast, and reliable crosschain transactions. It allows users to spend any asset to transact on any chain, instantly.

The user describes what they want to do. Relay enables the rest:

• Asset routing: Converts from what the user holds to what the destination needs
• Crosschain execution: Routes across 85+ networks instantly, no bridges or manual steps
• Transaction completion: Transactions complete or revert automatically, with 99.9%+ reliability

Relay enables all of these things with payments-grade speed, cost, and reliability - completing most transactions in under 2 seconds.

The result: A seamless user experience of onchain money. Users hold assets wherever they want and transact however they want, for any onchain action. Applications integrate once and connect with any user, on any chain, in any asset. It’s onchain money that actually works.

At Production Scale

Relay has become the connective tissue of the onchain economy:

• $20B+ in volume
• 100M+ transactions
• 85+ chains supported — including Solana, Tron, Bitcoin, and every major EVM network
• 99.9%+ reliability

Relay is the #1 source of transactions on Base and among the top senders on Ethereum mainnet and Optimism. Applications like Phantom, MetaMask, OpenSea, and Coinbase Wallet use Relay to give their users instant crosschain capabilities.

The Relay Chain

As Relay has scaled over the past two years, we've been evolving its infrastructure to serve the needs of global commerce and payments. Core to this ambition is the Relay Chain.

The Relay Chain is purpose-built to serve the expanding need for crosschain settlement and exchange. It's not a new chain competing for users or applications. It's infrastructure — a dedicated layer that makes every other chain more connected.

This is not a future project. The Relay Chain is live today. Check out the Relay Chain Explorer here.

For users, Relay works the way it always has. The Relay Chain operates in the background and is being rolled out incrementally. As we continue to build out the core infrastructure, we will never compromise on user experience.

Why Dedicated Infrastructure?

Supporting efficient crosschain settlement at scale requires purpose-built infrastructure. Building a dedicated chain is the ideal design:

Faster settlement. The Relay Chain is designed to improve settlement speed as volume scales. Because transactions on Relay Chain are extremely inexpensive, it can settle each individual order rather than batching settlements. This allows capital to be used much more efficiently within the system - leading to lower prices, better route availability, and less risk.

Lower costs. Dedicated infrastructure helps reduce settlement costs over time. This means crosschain transactions can be abstracted away into the background, creating a significantly improved experience for users who simply want things to work seamlessly without thinking about the underlying complexity.

More efficient liquidity. The Relay Chain helps solvers manage capital more efficiently across networks. Solvers can concentrate capital on Relay Chain rather than fragmenting it across dozens of chains. More efficient capital means better pricing and deeper liquidity for users.

We’ll be releasing more technical documentation on the Relay Chain and Protocol soon.

What Comes Next

Over the coming months, the Relay Chain will become the foundation for the next layer of Relay's infrastructure — making crosschain transactions faster, cheaper, and available across more apps and networks than ever before.

For users, this means one thing: money that just works. Instant, global, frictionless.

That's the future we're building. And we're just getting started.

If you're a builder that needs Relay, we'd love to talk. Reach out at relay.link or find us on Twitter.

If this mission resonates with you — we're scaling the team and looking for people who want to make money work the way it should. See our open roles at relay.link/careers.

For press enquiries: sian@relay.link