How does AI infrastructure work? In-depth analysis of Heima's modular blockchain architecture.

In 2026, public chains are undergoing a historic transition from monolithic architectures to modular designs. The core driving force behind this shift is that AI applications have introduced entirely new performance requirements for blockchain infrastructure—high-frequency micropayments, low-latency transaction confirmations, and programmable automated execution environments—needs that far exceed the performance requirements traditional DeFi applications place on underlying chains. By splitting a modular blockchain into four independent modules—consensus layer, data availability layer, execution layer, and settlement layer—each module can focus on its own role, optimize independently, and the overall transaction processing capacity increases by more than three times, while on-chain fees drop by up to 70%.

Against the backdrop of this technical evolution, Heima (HEI) provides a case worth a deep dive. As a Layer 1 blockchain that emerged from a strategic transition of the decentralized identity project Litentry, Heima has built a modular technology stack spanning chain abstraction, intent execution, and autonomous agents. This article breaks down Heima’s technical architecture from four core dimensions: the layered design of modular blockchains, the AI task scheduling mechanism, the implementation logic of the data availability layer, and how a decentralized computing resource network operates.

As of June 29, 2026, according to Gate market data, Heima (HEI) is quoted at $0.14509, with a 24-hour increase of 3.40%, a gain of 64.42% over the past 7 days, a market cap of approximately $9.8104 million, and a neutral market sentiment. Over the past 90 days, the HEI price has risen from a low of $0.05496 to a high of $0.27150, representing a range gain of 83.51%. Price volatility reflects the market’s ongoing attention to Heima’s technological progress, making an in-depth understanding of its architecture even more practically meaningful.

Modular Layering: The Substrate Foundation of Heima Layer 1

Heima Layer 1 is a customized blockchain built on the Substrate framework. Its core positioning is not a traditional settlement layer; instead, it functions as a coordination layer (Coordination Layer) for intents (Intent), agents (Agent), and cross-chain execution. This design choice in itself embodies modular thinking—Heima does not try to build a “universal chain,” but positions itself as the central nervous system of the entire ecosystem.

The Substrate framework gives Heima three key technical advantages:

Compatibility of a multi-language execution environment. Heima supports both WASM and EVM execution environments at the same time. This means developers can deploy Ethereum ecosystem smart contracts using Solidity, or build high-performance modules with languages such as Rust and C++ through WASM. This dual-track design reduces migration costs for developers and offers flexible choices across scenarios with different performance requirements.

Native governance module integration. Substrate’s Pallet architecture enables Heima to natively integrate modules such as governance, staking, bounties, and agent authentication. Governance is not implemented through external contracts; instead, it is embedded as a first principle within the chain itself. This reduces the attack surface for governance attacks and allows protocol upgrades to be completed without requiring a fork.

Built-in support for a decentralized scheduler. Through Substrate’s modular scheduling mechanism, Heima implements core functions such as intent queue management, retry mechanisms, and timed execution. This is the infrastructure-layer guarantee that enables Heima to support AI automated execution.

From the perspective of architectural layering, Heima Layer 1 effectively carries the functions of “a consensus layer + part of a settlement layer” found in traditional modular blockchains, while handing most of the execution-layer work to Omni Executor and Agent Hub. This “lightweight consensus + specialized execution” division of labor follows the same line of thinking as modular solutions such as Celestia and EigenLayer.

Agent Hub: Registration, Scheduling, and Incentives for AI Agents

If Heima Layer 1 is the nervous system, then Agent Hub is the execution muscle. Agent Hub is Heima’s infrastructure layer used to register, deploy, and manage autonomous agents—agents that can execute various on-chain operations on behalf of users or protocols.

Agent registration and capability declaration. Developers register agents through Heima’s API and SDK, declaring their capability scope and execution logic. Agents may choose to verify code or operator identity selectively, and offer services in the intent execution market. This mechanism effectively turns Agent Hub into an open market for “agent-as-a-service.”

A channel for real-time data access. To support agents’ real-time decision-making, Heima provides two data interfaces: HTTPS and WebSocket. Agents can obtain real-time on-chain data (such as token prices, vault positions, and arbitrage opportunities), and they can also connect to off-chain data sources such as social media crawlers and oracles. An event-driven triggering mechanism is jointly realized through the decentralized scheduler and external signals.

Incentive and trust mechanisms. Agents earn rewards for successfully executing intents, including rebates and incentive models. More importantly, agents must stake tokens as “collateral guarantees” to support their execution, enabling trustless delegation. This “staking equals reputation” mechanism creates a natural process of survival of the fittest among agents within Agent Hub.

From industry data, AI agents are evolving from information-processing tools into independent economic participants. Between May 2025 and April 2026, AI agents cumulatively completed approximately 176 million transactions across multiple blockchain networks, and the total settlement amount exceeded $73 million. As of the first quarter of 2026, more than 104,000 AI agents have been registered. The design of Agent Hub is a structural response to this trend—it is not merely a technical module, but an economic system.

Data Availability Layer: The Trust Foundation for Verifiable Execution

The data availability layer (DA Layer) is one of the most widely discussed technical modules in modular blockchain architectures. In Heima’s architecture, the DA Layer’s functionality is not provided by external services (such as EigenDA); instead, it is implemented through Heima Layer 1’s on-chain anchoring mechanism.

Full lifecycle traceability. Heima’s design principle is: “every on-chain action is traceable and verifiable.” From the moment a user submits an intent to the final state change, the entire execution lifecycle has complete records on Heima Layer 1. This means that any cross-chain transaction or agent execution can be found on-chain with all traces from submission to completion.

A unified actor registry. Heima maintains a unified registry for agents, execution actors (Filler), and relayers (Relayer). All roles involved in intent execution are registered on-chain and bound to cryptographic identities, which means auditing of the execution path is no longer a black-box operation.

Off-chain proofs guaranteed by TEE. For off-chain operations involving sensitive data, Heima generates verifiable proofs using a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). TEE ensures that data remains encrypted during processing and is only decrypted with user authorization. This mechanism allows Heima to provide the same level of verifiability for off-chain computation as on-chain execution, while protecting privacy.

Cross-domain traceability. Through attestations (Attestations) and signed logs, Heima achieves traceability of execution across both cross-chain and off-chain environments. This is particularly important for complex intent execution involving multiple blockchains—users can verify the status of each sub-transaction on its respective chain without having to trust any single intermediary.

By isolating the DA Layer, Heima brings significant cost optimization. Industry data shows that solutions such as EigenDA reduce on-chain storage costs by 90%. By embedding data availability into Layer 1 rather than relying on an external DA Layer, Heima maintains verifiability while keeping the architecture simple and internally consistent.

Decentralized Computing Resource Network: Omni Executor and Intent-Driven Execution

A decentralized computing resource network is the bridge in Heima’s architecture that connects user intents to underlying execution. Its core component is Omni Executor—an automated intent routing and execution coordination engine.

An intent-driven interaction paradigm. In Heima’s architecture, Intent (intent) is the primary way users interact with the system. Users only need to express the outcome they want to achieve—for example, “swap 1 ETH for the USDC at the best price”—without worrying about underlying details such as the execution path, liquidity sources, or Gas fees. The system automatically completes path planning, liquidity scheduling, and cross-chain settlement.

Automatic calculation of the optimal path. After receiving a user’s intent, Omni Executor automatically calculates the optimal execution path. This calculation considers multiple dimensions, including liquidity depth on each chain, current exchange rates, cross-chain bridging costs, and each execution node’s historical reputation score. This is a multi-dimensional optimization problem, not a simple price comparison.

Coordinated scheduling of cross-chain liquidity. When an intent involves multiple blockchains, Omni Executor must coordinate cross-chain liquidity. This is different from traditional cross-chain bridges—users do not need to manually choose which chain to go from to which chain, nor do they need to handle transaction confirmations separately for each chain. Omni Executor encapsulates multi-chain operations into a unified transaction (Transaction), and coordinates underlying execution nodes to complete the operations.

On-chain anchoring of execution records. After Omni Executor completes execution, all execution records are anchored to the Heima Layer 1 network for verification and audit. This mechanism makes the entire intent execution process traceable and verifiable, forming a closed loop with the DA Layer design principles mentioned earlier.

From the viewpoint of the computing resource network, Heima’s node network runs on globally distributed validators and executors. These nodes coordinate to verify transactions and execute intents without a centralized coordinator. Nodes participate by staking tokens, tying their economic interests to honest behavior and forming a trustless basis for collaboration.

From Architecture to Ecosystem: The Strategic Significance of Modular Design

Looking back at Heima’s four core modules—Substrate-based Layer 1, Agent Hub, the data availability anchoring mechanism, and a computing resource network driven by Omni Executor—there is a clear design logic: layered decoupling, each module focuses on its own role, yet forms a closed loop through a unified on-chain coordination layer.

The strategic significance of this architecture is especially prominent in the current era when AI and blockchain integration is accelerating. Modular blockchains make it possible to have execution layers tailored to AI scenarios. Heima, through Agent Hub, provides an open market for agent registration and scheduling; through Omni Executor, it provides intent-driven automated execution capabilities; and through Layer 1’s on-chain anchoring, it provides verifiability guarantees—together, these form a complete technology stack for AI-native applications.

From market data, this technical route is gaining increasing attention. As of June 29, 2026, Heima (HEI) has a total supply of 92,859.2 million tokens, and its 24-hour trading volume is approximately $930.2k. Over the last 30 days, the HEI price has risen by 22.80%, and over the last 90 days, the increase has reached 83.51%. Although the price fell by 50.41% over the past year, recent performance shows a clear rebound trend.

More importantly, the technology combination represented by Heima—“modular blockchain + AI agents + chain abstraction”—is one of the most discussed structural main themes in the crypto industry in 2026. The total global cryptocurrency market capitalization is approximately $2.14 trillion, and AI-generated trading activity already accounts for more than 15% of decentralized exchange trading volume. Modular blockchains have become the standard configuration for public chain design, with new chain deployment cycles compressed from half a year to two weeks and costs reduced by 85%. Amid this industry transformation, Heima’s technical architecture provides a complete sample from underlying consensus to upper-layer execution.

Conclusion

Heima’s modular blockchain architecture is not a simple stacking of technologies, but a systematic answer to the question: “what kind of blockchain infrastructure does the AI era need?” By providing a consensus and coordination foundation through Substrate-based Layer 1, building the infrastructure of an agent economy through Agent Hub, ensuring verifiability through data availability anchoring, and enabling intent-driven automated execution through Omni Executor—these four modules each do their part yet interoperate with one another, forming a complete closed loop from user intent to on-chain execution.

For readers who follow the evolution of crypto infrastructure, understanding Heima’s architecture helps not only to grasp the development logic of a specific project, but also to understand how the three technology mainlines of modular blockchains, AI agents, and chain abstraction converge and cooperate. At the turning point when public chains move from monolithic to modular, and from manual operation to automated execution, Heima’s technical architecture offers an observation sample worth continuous tracking.

FAQ

Q1: How is Heima different from traditional Layer 1 blockchains?

Heima Layer 1 is not positioned primarily as a settlement layer; instead, it is designed as a coordination layer for intents, agents, and cross-chain execution. It is built on Substrate, supports both WASM and EVM execution environments, and enables programmable automation through built-in schedulers and governance modules. Its core value is to provide a verifiable coordination foundation for upper-layer applications, rather than only raw transaction processing capability.

Q2: How do agents in Agent Hub ensure execution trustworthiness?

Agents need to stake tokens to provide collateral guarantees for execution. At the same time, all agents are registered uniformly on-chain, and their execution records are anchored via Heima Layer 1, making the entire process traceable. For off-chain operations involving sensitive data, the TEE can generate verifiable proofs. Together, these three elements form a trustless agent execution system.

Q3: How does Heima handle cross-chain transaction fees?

Heima automatically handles cross-chain transaction fees through its Gas abstraction mechanism. Users do not need to manually prepare native tokens from each chain as Gas fees; at the underlying level, the system automatically completes fee calculation, conversion, and payment. This mechanism significantly lowers the user barrier for multi-chain operations.

Q4: What is the difference between Heima’s data availability layer and solutions like Celestia?

Heima does not rely on an external DA layer; instead, it embeds the data availability function into Layer 1’s on-chain anchoring mechanism. All intent execution records are anchored to the Heima Layer 1 network for verification and audit. This design maintains verifiability while preserving architectural coherence, without introducing additional external trust assumptions.

Q5: What role does the HEI token play in the Heima network?

HEI is the native token of the Heima network, used for network governance (participating in decisions such as validator parameters and runtime upgrades through a DAO), agent staking (as collateral guarantees for execution trustworthiness), and incentive distribution (agents receive rewards after successfully executing intents).