NodeKit, the team developing SEQ, a shared sequencer L1 built on an Avalanche Subnet, has raised $1.2M in a pre-seed round. The round was led by Borderless Capital with participation from Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund, Polygon Ventures, Wormhole Cross-Chain Ecosystem Fund, and many angels (including key angel investors such as Avail’s Anurag Arjun and BENQI’s hn_avax). The team is using funding to help decentralize the next generation of rollups powered by SEQ. 

SEQ is designed to help decentralize rollup transaction sequencing, directly addressing the main issue overshadowing rollups: centralization. SEQ aims to help rollups capitalize on their advantages with fewer tradeoffs, bringing them greater robustness, performance, and interoperability. 

The vast majority of rollups will be compatible with SEQ, including sovereign rollups, smart contract rollups (such as ZK and optimistic), and everything from Rollkit to the OP Stack. SEQ’s flexible design will even support various data availability layers (like Avail and Celestia), positioning SEQ (and Avalanche) to break new ground in the pioneering of both L2s and modular blockchains. Additionally, NodeKit shows how creative teams can use Avalanche Subnets to scale and improve Ethereum. 

Further, rollups integrating with SEQ will gain new cross-chain interoperability. This interoperability is possible because SEQ orders blocks for multiple rollups, allowing for atomic inclusion using atomic bundles within the same block. 

“NodeKit enables rollups to have seamless interoperability which unlocks innovative rollup design, empowering on-chain applications to directly compete with centralized off-chain applications,” said Noah Pravecek, CEO of NodeKit. “This enables a new design space for rollups where they don’t have to pick between decentralization or high user growth. Rollups desire a cost-effective, lightning-fast, decentralized sequencer to improve the quality of their users’ experience. NodeKit fulfills this need.”

NodeKit’s team consists of three co-founders aged 21, 21, and 20. Pravecek is CEO, Nick Preszler is CTO, and Ricardo Tavarez is the third co-founder and founding software engineer. All three have dropped out of universities in the American Midwest to fully pursue NodeKit and Web3. 

Excitingly, SEQ is one of the first major initiatives to leverage Avalanche’s HyperSDK toolkit. HyperSDK gives builders deep customizability (any virtual machine is possible) while optimizing custom blockchains built atop Avalanche Subnets for absolute speed. On testnet, HyperSDK has hit 140,000+ TPS. SEQ will enhance rollups with HyperSDK’s simultaneous speed and scaling benefits. 

In a time of L2 proliferation, NodeKit’s raise and first product is timely. Most L2s remain highly centralized, with single points of failure endangering whole networks. NodeKit aims to solve the centralization problem by incorporating a decentralized network of validators, making rollups more robust. NodeKit will actively work with each rollup, guiding them on their path toward greater decentralization. 

“Nodekit is addressing some of the deepest challenges across the modular Web3 ecosystem,” said Alpen Sheth, PhD, Senior Partner at Borderless Capital. “Alongside the tremendous adoption of L2 solutions (‘rollups’), centralization remains prevalent despite the obvious drawbacks it brings, including critical censorship and performance issues. Through SEQ, NodeKit introduces atomic composability and shared sequencing to the leading protocols bringing economic efficiency and true decentralization for cross-chain modularity."

“We’ve worked closely with NodeKit’s young, highly driven team from the beginning and are thrilled for SEQ to strengthen the rollup ecosystem,” said Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo, head of DeFi and DevRel at Ava Labs. “NodeKit not only demonstrates a powerful use case for Subnets and HyperSDK, the team is changing how developers can think about modular systems — all while using Avalanche’s fast, stable Snowman consensus.”

In many ways, the launch of NodeKit marks Avalanche’s entry into a highly competitive, ever-expanding Ethereum L2 market. L2 sequencers collect fees as users transact, with top Ethereum L2s like Optimism and Arbitrum surpassing $5M each in total fees generated in busy months. 

With SEQ’s testnet launch planned for 2024, NodeKit will soon add a powerful tool to both the Avalanche and broader Web3 ecosystems, kickstarting the next generation of rollups and opening the door to new infrastructure possibilities.

For more about NodeKit, please see NodeKit’s newly relaunched website. For more about HyperSDK, check out its announcement post and GitHub. 

About NodeKit

NodeKit is building a shared sequencer L1 called SEQ which helps rollups decentralize their sequencing leading to higher uptime and enhanced interoperability. Integrating with SEQ allows for rollups to achieve cross-rollup interoperability.