Artificial intelligence-focused blockchain protocol startup Halliday International Inc. said Tuesday that it raised $20 million in early funding to help fund the development of an agentic AI capability that will help developers eliminate the need for writing smart contracts.
The company’s Series A funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto venture capital arm, with participation from the Avalanche Blizzard Fund, Credibly Neutral and Alt Layer. This round brings the company’s total funding to $26 million, following a $6 million seed round in 2022.
Blockchain technology is a decentralized ledger that records transactions across a network, ensuring an immutable, transparent historical record. It’s best known as the technology behind cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Smart contracts are self-executing digital programs stored on blockchains that automatically run when the terms of their “contract” are met, without the need for intermediaries. They have long been the default way the industry builds applications on the blockchain; however, smart contract development is fraught with risk. Their coding can sometimes be riddled with vulnerabilities and exploits, making them a common target for malicious parties.
According to Halliday, this means that adding smart contract functionality can take months and require expensive audits to ensure they are ready for production.
To address this challenge, the company created the Workflow Protocol, an AI-powered system that uses blockchain technology and autonomous agents to perform the same functions traditionally handled by smart contracts. These include recurring cryptocurrency payments, cross-chain bridging, seamless checkout across networks, treasury management and other key operations.
Halliday said the workflow engine is the perfect foundation for AI agents, which can be used to compose and define any task with guardrails for autonomous financial and software systems to work for users.
“Our insight was to build a workflow engine once and never write a smart contract again,” the company explained in a blog post. “An engine eliminates the need to write new smart contracts per use case by handling protocol integration, composition and automation out of the box.”
According to a report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis Inc., crypto hacking remained a persistent threat throughout 2024, with around $2.2 billion stolen in hacks. Alongside vulnerabilities, smart contracts continue to be a significant pain point for the industry, as developers push services into production quickly while eschewing proper security, the company said.
Halliday said a proprietary version of its workflow engine has already been in production for over a year, powering payments for ApeChain, Avalanche Inc.’s Core Wallet, Shrapnel, DeFi Kingdoms, Metis and more. The company also said it has secured upcoming integrations with Frax Finance, Lens Labs and Story Protocol.
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