Introducing Vela: New Confidential Compute Layer that Brings Private Execution to Public Blockchains

Horizen Labs introduces Vela: New Confidential Compute Layer that Brings Private Execution to Public Blockchains

We’re excited to introduce Vela, a new confidential compute platform that enables institutions to interact with public blockchains without revealing sensitive financial information, while simplifying access to private computation by handling the underlying infrastructure so developers can focus on application logic.

Despite growing interest in tokenization, most activity still happens off public blockchains. An estimated $373 billion in tokenized real-world assets sits on permissioned networks, compared with $24.6 billion issued on public chains, leaving roughly 94% of tokenized assets in private environments without access to DeFi liquidity.

Vela is designed to close that gap by enabling applications to execute inside Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), hardware-isolated environments where computations are cryptographically attested and protected from operators, infrastructure providers, and external observers.

“Public blockchains created global liquidity, but they also exposed operational data that institutions cannot afford to reveal.

Vela allows institutions to access open blockchain markets while keeping strategies, investor information, and execution logic confidential. Compliance can be verified cryptographically without exposing the underlying data.”

— Rob Viglione, Co-Founder and CEO of Horizen Labs.

The launch comes as market participants and regulators increasingly examine risks created by transaction transparency in crypto markets. Over $600 million per year is estimated to be extracted from public blockchain participants through strategies such as front-running and sandwich attacks, which exploit visible transaction data before trades are finalized.

Vela’s architecture encrypts execution logic and transaction data before they reach the public blockchain. The only information written to the ledger is an encrypted state commitment and a proof verifying that the computation ran inside a secure enclave.

Vela serves as the confidential compute layer powering the Horizen chain, an OP Stack Layer 3 network built on Base. Through this integration, applications deployed on Horizen can access Vela’s confidential execution environment natively, while remaining connected to Base’s liquidity through fast cross-chain bridging via LayerZero’s Stargate V2. This makes Horizen the first chain on Base with native confidential execution, extending Base’s scalable, composable infrastructure into institutional and privacy-sensitive use cases without fragmenting liquidity. A builder funding program, run in partnership with Thrive Protocol, is already allocating grants to developers building privacy-first applications on the network.

This approach allows institutions to combine private execution, regulatory visibility, and public blockchain liquidity in a single system. Horizen Labs expects the technology to support several emerging institutional use cases in decentralized finance, including:

• Tokenized asset issuers seeking liquidity on public chains without exposing investor data or deal terms.
• Quant trading firms protecting proprietary strategies from front-running and market mirroring.
• Institutional asset managers operating on public blockchain infrastructure while maintaining client confidentiality.

Vela operates as a chain-agnostic confidential compute layer, allowing developers to integrate the system with existing blockchains and decentralized applications without migrating infrastructure.

We’re providing a **Starter Kit** that gives developers a fully working sandbox to start building confidential applications. No ZK expertise required.

• For more information, please visit vela.horizenlabs.io
• Vela Documentation

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