e23 has announced a strategic partnership and investment with Virtuals Protocol, an economic operating system enabling AI agents to transact, raise funds, and coordinate work autonomously, at a $20 million company valuation. The investment will accelerate the development of e23 Protocol and enable institutional participants to engage with the testnet ahead of mainnet.
Why a Sovereign Layer-1 Blockchain?
Most blockchain infrastructure decisions begin with a question of cost and speed: which existing chain offers the fastest settlement, the lowest fees, and the largest developer ecosystem. That may be a reasonable framework for consumer applications. However, it is not the ideal framework for institutional financial infrastructure.
Financial institutions, regulators, and central authorities require deterministic guarantees over settlement finality, cryptographic standards, compliance logic, and custody rules. Those guarantees cannot be inherited from another blockchain's security assumptions. They have to be set at the protocol layer. Building a sovereign Layer-1 blockchain gives e23 the ability to establish the foundational infrastructure, while enabling institutions and regulators to participate through private permissioned access with defined governance, transaction oversight and operational controls embedded at the protocol level.
Post-Quantum Cryptography at the Protocol Level
The distinction between embedding post-quantum cryptography at the base protocol versus adding it above existing infrastructure is significant and consistently understated in market discussion.
Retrofitting a chain with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) protects individual transactions. It does not address the underlying key infrastructure, the consensus mechanism, or the settlement layer beneath it. e23 Protocol embeds post-quantum cryptography at the base layer since inception. Settlement logic, custody, and compliance architecture are resilient to quantum-era computational threats from the beginning, not as a correction applied after the fact.
Malaysia's national post-quantum cryptography readiness programme is legislating for this standard across critical financial sectors by 2030. e23 Protocol is designed to meet that requirement at the foundational level.
The Agentic Finance Thesis
The investment by Virtuals Protocol reflects a specific thesis about where financial infrastructure is heading. Virtuals Protocol has powered more than 40,000 autonomous agents and over 2 million agentic jobs. Its economic operating system enables AI agents to transact, raise capital, and coordinate work autonomously.
AI agents are beginning to move from task automation into financial execution. The infrastructure those agents settle on determines the ceiling of what agentic finance can reliably execute. Compliant, cryptographically resilient base-layer infrastructure is the precondition for that use case.
Wui Yang, Founder and CEO of e23: "Global financial systems are moving toward programmable, AI-driven infrastructure and the cryptographic foundations beneath them have to outlast the quantum threats. The systems underpinning that future cannot rely on cryptographic assumptions designed for a pre-quantum world. Crypto agility is the foundational requirement for a robust, long-term financial infrastructure, and building a sovereign Layer-1 blockchain gives us the ability to embed those standards directly at the protocol level, before those threats materialise. Malaysia has the opportunity to shape the next generation of institutional digital finance infrastructure for the region, and our partnership with Virtuals Protocol accelerates that trajectory."
Jansen, Co-Founder of Virtuals Protocol: "The next evolution of global commerce will be driven by autonomous AI agents, but the true scale of agentic finance can only be realized on infrastructure that is inherently secure, compliant, and future-proof. e23 is building that essential foundation. By embedding post-quantum cryptography at the base layer, they ensure that as AI agents begin to transact and settle massive institutional volumes, they are doing so on rails resilient to both legacy and quantum-era threats. Our investment reflects a shared conviction that the convergence of AI and secured digital infrastructure is where the future of finance will be won.
Malaysia's Digital Asset and Post-Quantum Infrastructure Transition
Malaysia’s Securities Commission Capital Market Masterplan 2026–2030 identifies digital assets, tokenisation and programmable finance as strategic priorities in the country’s long-term capital market transformation. In parallel, Malaysia’s national post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness initiatives are accelerating the transition toward quantum-resilient infrastructure across critical financial and digital systems.
e23 Protocol is being developed within this broader shift: a sovereign, post-quantum secured Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for institutional stablecoin settlement, tokenised financial infrastructure and regulated digital asset coordination.
The Road Ahead
e23 Protocol testnet is in development. Institutional participants, developers, and regulated entities will be able to deploy, test, and build on the blockchain ahead of mainnet. Institutions and partners can register interest in early access on our Contact Page.
About e23
e23 is a venture and technology company building institutional-grade infrastructure for regulated digital asset markets. Our core systems span cross-border stablecoin settlement, real-world asset tokenisation, blockchain solution with post-quantum cryptography and AI-powered execution. e23 is headquartered in Malaysia and focused on driving the institutionalisation of on-chain finance across Southeast Asia.
About Virtuals Protocol
Virtuals is a protocol designed to give AI agents the foundational infrastructure to refine agent-to-agent work coordination and exchange commercial values. Our proprietary Operating System modernizes agentic coordination with 5 interconnected infrastructure pillars, spanning identity & banking, verifiable commerce, capital formation, law & governance, and physical labor. To-date the ecosystem has powered more than 40,000 autonomous agents and over 2 million agentic jobs.