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About Witness Chain
Witness Chain is a decentralized watchtower network built on EigenLayer, providing verifiable monitoring services for optimistic rollups. Its core business is running a network of independent watchtower nodes that monitor L2 state assertions and transaction inclusions on L1, submitting proof-of-diligence to earn rewards.
The market pain point it addresses is the "lazy validator" problem in optimistic rollups: the fraud proof mechanism assumes someone will actively challenge invalid state transitions, but in reality, validators often lack incentives or resources to do so. Witness Chain solves this by introducing an incentivized, permissionless watchtower network that ensures challenges are always issued, thereby strengthening the security of rollups.
Its core competitiveness lies in its decentralized and programmable security model: leveraging EigenLayer's shared security, it creates a trustless verification layer that can be customized through smart contracts (e.g., SLA contracts) to meet different rollups' needs. The network also supports Proof of Location and physical-world verification, expanding beyond pure blockchain monitoring.
In the past six months (2026-02-28 to 2026-08-31), Witness Chain has made notable progress: it released a v2 upgrade that migrated core contracts (DiligenceProofManager, AlertManager) to an L2 chain to reduce gas costs for watchtower operators. It also launched InfinityWatch, a new initiative for DePIN and AI verification, enabling real-world actions to be cryptographically verified. The documentation has been updated to reflect these changes, and the network has expanded its watchtower client capabilities to support both state assertions and transaction inclusion proofs.
Witness Chain, as a decentralized observer network, has several key milestones. In December 2023, Phase 1 launched on Sepolia testnet, integrating Watchtower clients with EigenLayer contracts and onboarding OP Stack node operators. In March 2024, Phase 2 advanced on Holesky testnet, adding aggregator functionality and transaction inclusion proofs.
In April 2024, the mainnet launched in three phases: operator whitelist registration on April 11, proof submission from April 22-29, and aggregator settlement starting April 29. This marked the Watchtower network's entry into production.
At the infrastructure level, Witness Chain integrated with Akash Network, deploying Watchtower nodes on decentralized cloud infrastructure, enhancing geographic distribution and censorship resistance. Technically, the project is built on the EigenLayer AVS framework, with economic security provided through EigenLayer operators. Currently, 114 operators and over 45,200 delegates participate, locking approximately 3.79 million ETH.
The project plans to launch the DePIN Watchtower mainnet version in June 2024, expanding into physical world verification scenarios.
Witness Chain expanded its EigenLayer-secured verifiable network, with watchtower count surpassing 6,000 across 60+ countries and 100+ cities, and stakes exceeding $10B. The mainnet deployment of its AVS (WitnessHub) went live, enabling Proof of Location and Proof of Bandwidth services. In Q2 2026, the team launched the Infinitywatch Explorer and campaign mobile apps for decentralized physical-world verification. Future roadmap focuses on scaling the watchtower protocol to support more L2 chains (beyond op-stack), decentralizing the aggregator role, and introducing SLA smart contracts for programmable security. The team also plans to expand Proof of Bandwidth applications and strengthen cross-chain verification capabilities.
Co-founders: Pramod Vishwanath, Himanshu Tyagi, Ranvir Rana.
Himanshu Tyagi: PhD from University of Maryland (Information Theory & Cryptography); dual degree from IIT Delhi (Electrical Engineering). Former Assistant Professor at IISc (2015-2021). Co-founder of Witness Chain and Banyan (AI for Telco).
Pramod Vishwanath: Co-founder of Witness Chain; background in distributed systems and cryptography; previously at Ethereum Foundation and other Web3 projects.
Ranvir Rana: PhD from UIUC (distributed systems); co-founder & CEO of Witness Chain; led protocol design, fundraising ($8M), and scaling to 6,000+ nodes globally.