Hyle

Hyli, formerly known as Hylé, is a French company developing a proof-powered Layer-1 blockchain designed specifically for zero-knowledge (ZK) applications. The company was founded in 2024 by Sylve Chevet and Lancelot de Ferrière le Vayer. Both founders have a background that includes experience at Ledger, a prominent firm in the digital asset security space. Sylve Chevet, the CEO, previously worked as a product manager at Ledger and was involved in building an NFT protocol and a provable game engine, indicating a deep-seated expertise in the blockchain stack.

Hyli positions itself as a "lean blockchain" that addresses the complexity, high costs, and fragmented tooling associated with developing ZK applications. The core of its business is to provide a minimalist yet sufficient infrastructure that focuses only on sequencing and settlement. This modular architecture, inspired by projects like Celestia, separates the execution of complex logic from the on-chain verification. Developers can build their applications to run complex logic off-chain and then submit a proof to the Hyli network, which natively verifies it before settling the transaction on-chain. This approach is designed to drastically reduce the cost and latency of proof verification, a significant barrier in the current ZK landscape.

The company's primary product is its modular settlement layer, which is engineered to be compatible with any execution engine, proof system, or prover. This gives developers flexibility, supporting various proving schemes such as Polygon zkEVM, Cairo, and Noir. Hyli's network operates on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and features innovations like "pipelined proving," which decouples proof generation from application execution to allow for asynchronous processing and enhanced performance. The business model centers on creating a foundational layer for a new generation of "provable apps" across sectors like DeFi, gaming, and identity verification. By simplifying the development process, Hyli aims to function as a core utility layer, or a "layer 0," for the entire ZK ecosystem, enabling interoperability between different chains.

In May 2024, the company announced it had raised a total of $3.4 million. This includes a $2.6 million seed round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from investors like Cherry Crypto, Fabric Ventures, First Capital, and Heartcore Capital. The funding is earmarked for launching its mainnet and expanding the engineering team to integrate additional proving systems and create more developer tools. The company also generated $1.5 million in revenue from a prior NFT project called briqNFT. In May 2025, the company officially rebranded from Hylé to Hyli to adopt a simpler, more accessible name. Keywords: Hyli, Hylé, blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs, ZK apps, Layer-1, modular blockchain, settlement layer, proof verification, Sylve Chevet, Lancelot de Ferrière le Vayer, Framework Ventures, provable applications, lean blockchain, decentralized finance, on-chain gaming, data availability, pipelined proving, proof composability, crypto infrastructure, web3, ZKP verification, censorship-resistant, briqNFT