Octra is a privacy-focused blockchain designed to provide encrypted computation services for web3 and artificial intelligence applications through its proprietary Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology. ^{[1] [2]} The network is being developed by Octra Labs, a Swiss-based association, and is engineered to function both as an independent Layer 1 blockchain and as a decentralized co-processor for other major blockchain ecosystems. ^[1]​

The project's primary goal is to enable "privacy on demand" for on-chain activities, allowing developers to build applications with confidential state and execution, such as private decentralized finance (DeFi), secure data analytics, and confidential AI model training. ^{[1] [3]} Octra utilizes a unique cryptographic implementation called Hypergraph FHE (HFHE) and a hybrid consensus mechanism named Proof-of-Useful Work (PoUW) to achieve its objectives. ^{[4] [3]}​

History and Development

Octra was founded in 2021 by a team that includes former engineers and researchers from the original VK (Vkontakte) and Telegram teams. ^[1] The project was entirely self-funded for its first three years (2021-2024), during which the team focused on building its FHE technology from the ground up. An internal prototype was completed in November 2023, and the project raised its first external capital in early 2024 to accelerate development. ^[7]

The Octra testnet went live in June 2025, offering initial functionalities like wallet generation and encrypted asset transfers. During its testing phase, the network reportedly processed over 100 million transactions from 1.5 million accounts and achieved a peak throughput of 17,000 transactions per second (TPS). The network successfully withstood several publicized DDOS attacks with no reported downtime. To further stress-test the system, Octra initiated a $100,000 bug bounty and a hackathon. ^{[1] [7]}

On December 9, 2025, Octra Labs announced its intention to launch a public token sale. A final mainnet upgrade, introducing basic functionality, is planned to occur before the sale begins in mid-December 2025. ^{[1] [7]} A major network upgrade is planned for the first quarter of 2026, which is expected to introduce full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, developer tools for programmable privacy, and integrations with the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. ^[1]

Technology

Octra's architecture is built around its proprietary implementation of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to create a general-purpose, peer-to-peer network for confidential computing and storage. ^[3]

Network Architecture

Octra is designed with a dual-function architecture, allowing it to operate as a standalone, encrypted Layer 1 blockchain or as a decentralized co-processor that provides privacy-as-a-service to other networks. ^[1] The primary codebase is developed in OCaml, Rust, and C++, and the network uses a modified version of IrminDB as its primary database for nodes. ^[4]

The network consists of three types of nodes:

• Bootstrap Nodes: Core nodes responsible for maintaining network synchronization and storing the primary network state. They require dedicated IP addresses and significant hardware resources.
• Standard Nodes: Validator nodes that service parts of the network, process transactions, and participate in consensus. These are typically run on servers or powerful PCs with high uptime.
• Light Nodes: Minimal-requirement instances that can run on consumer-grade hardware, such as a Raspberry Pi, or as a background process on a personal computer. These node types work together to support the network's decentralized structure. ^[3]

Core Components

Hypergraph Fully Homomorphic Encryption (HFHE)

HFHE is Octra's proprietary FHE implementation, described as "FHE with bootstrapping on hypergraphs." ^[4] Unlike traditional FHE schemes that may process operations serially, HFHE maps every bit of data to a vertex in a hypergraph. This allows logical gates (such as AND, OR, XOR) and arithmetic operations to be processed as independent hyperedges in parallel, a design intended to achieve the high throughput required for a scalable blockchain. ^[3] The HFHE library supports modular arithmetic, ciphertext subtraction and multiplication, and mechanisms for managing computational noise. It was developed entirely by the Octra Labs team. ^{[4] [1]}

Proof-of-Useful Work (PoUW)

Octra employs a hybrid consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Useful Work. This system directs the network's computational resources toward solving practical, FHE-related tasks rather than arbitrary cryptographic puzzles. The network uses a validator scoring system to select nodes for participation in consensus. This score is calculated from over 30 parameters, including a node's transaction history, network participation time, verified blocks, stake share, and computing power. This model is designed to optimize for scalability, latency, and security, with a theoretical performance complexity of O(n), where 'n' is the number of validators. ^[3]

Circles (Isolated Execution Environments)

Circles are interconnected, Isolated Execution Environments (IEEs) that function as customizable on-chain servers. They serve as the primary interface for developers, who can "borrow" compute, memory, and storage from the network to deploy complex back-end logic. Applications within Circles can have private or public logic and can be written in languages such as C++, Rust, OCaml, or compiled to WASM. Each Circle can manage an on-chain application state of up to 32 MB and can be grouped into clusters for greater capacity. ^[3]

Decentralized Storage Network (DSN)

Octra includes a proprietary, encrypted, and distributed storage layer known as the DSN. Data is secured using FHE and distributed across the network using a partial replication scheme. The network maintains 24 copies of each data fragment, stored across a random selection of network nodes to ensure data redundancy and availability. ^[3]

Security Mechanisms

The security of the Octra network relies on its key management system and data isolation techniques. Instead of using threshold decryption, it implements:

• Key Sharding: Secret keys, decryption keys, and bootstrapping keys are deterministically split into hashed shards and distributed across different validator nodes each epoch.
• Key Rotation: All cryptographic keys are regenerated from fresh randomness at the start of every epoch. The epoch duration is dynamic, lasting minutes on the testnet with a target of seconds on the mainnet, making it computationally infeasible for an attacker to reconstruct a full key.
• Data Isolation: The network uses transciphering to re-encrypt data from one cryptographic key to another without exposing the plaintext. This ensures data remains confidential and isolated between different Circles and the main network. Proxy re-encryption is also used to enable a proxy to securely transform ciphertexts between public keys, facilitating secure data sharing among users. These security features are central to the network's design. ^[3]

Differentiation

According to co-founder "Alex," Octra's FHE implementation was developed entirely in-house "from scratch," which he contrasts with competitors like Fhenix and Inco, who he stated may license FHE technology from third parties like Zama. He also claimed that while systems using Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proofs or Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) may still allow node operators to access underlying data, Octra's FHE implementation ensures data remains encrypted and inaccessible to both outside observers and network validators. ^[1]

OCT Token

The native utility token of the Octra ecosystem is the OCT token. ^[1] Its primary utility is to pay for network services, including computation fees, transactions, and storage. Users on both the Octra Layer 1 and from external ecosystems using Octra as a co-processor must use OCT to pay network operators. The token also functions as a reward for network validators. ^{[3] [7]}

Public Sale and Funding History

Prior to its public sale, Octra raised a total of $8 million through several private funding rounds. The project was self-funded from its inception in 2021 until early 2024, when it raised its first external capital. ^{[8] [7]}

• Pre-Seed Round: A $4 million pre-seed round was raised in early 2024. The round was led by FinalityCap and included investors such as BigBrainVC, Karatage, Presto_Labs, and BuilderVC. ^{[5] [7]}
• Echo Sales: A total of $4 million was raised across two oversubscribed sales on the Echo platform in 2025, occurring in January and August. ^[7] One $2 million sale, announced as "recently completed" in October 2025, included participation from angel investors and funds such as z00m3rf13d, Comfy Capital, Game Theorizing, devops199fan, and Cobie. ^[8] As part of its funding strategy, the project stated that no single investor holds more than 3% of the total token supply. ^[7]
• Public Sale: A public sale for the OCT token is scheduled to begin on December 18, 2025, and run for one week. The sale will be hosted on the Sonar platform, which was founded by Jordan "Cobie" Fish and later acquired by Coinbase. The sale aims to raise up to $20 million at a static $200 million Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV), with a price of $0.20 per OCT. ^{[1] [7]}

The public sale will offer 10% of the total OCT token supply in a fixed-price, commitment-style format where participants receive a pro-rata share of tokens. The allocation may be doubled to 20% if demand is high. The project has stated this model was chosen to promote decentralization and is styled after Ethereum's 2014 initial coin offering. ^{[7] [1]}

All tokens from the sale will be fully unlocked and liquid upon distribution, which will be done in an encrypted format shortly after the sale's conclusion. Any tokens that remain unsold are slated to be burned. ^{[1] [7]}

Tokenomics

The total supply of OCT tokens is 1,000,000,000. The allocation is as follows: ^[7]

• Validator Rewards: 27% (unmined)
• Early Investors: 18%
• Octra Labs: 15% (for ongoing development)
• Liquidity, Ecosystem Grants & Bounties: 10%
• Public Sale: 10%
• Potential ICO Extension: 10% (to be used if the main sale is oversubscribed; otherwise burned)
• Echo Participants: 5%
• Faucet Airdrop (Concluded): 5%

According to the project, this distribution model aims for decentralization, with roughly two-thirds of the supply allocated to the community and one-third to investors and the development team. ^[7]

Use Cases

Octra's confidential computing capabilities are designed to support a wide range of applications where data privacy is critical. Potential use cases include:

• Confidential DeFi: Creating on-chain dark pools for confidential trading, as well as stablecoin transfers with private balances and metadata.
• Decentralized AI: Training machine learning models on sensitive encrypted user data, such as medical or financial records, without exposing the underlying information.
• Layer 2 Rollups: Serving as a confidential compute layer or an encrypted state store for existing Layer 1 blockchains, including EVM and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) chains.
• Real-World Assets (RWAs): Tokenizing and managing assets like bonds, equities, or real estate contracts with complete confidentiality of ownership and transaction history.
• Decentralized Identity (DeID): Verifying user credentials, such as age or location, without revealing the personal information itself.
• Private Governance: Enabling private on-chain voting and other interactions for decentralized organizations and communities.
• Secure Data Markets: Facilitating barter markets for tokenized contracts or collaborative data analysis where parties can compute on a shared dataset without exposing their individual contributions. These applications leverage the network's ability to process encrypted information. ^{[3] [1]}

Team

The project's co-founders are known publicly by the mononyms "Alex" and "David." Alex is the public-facing co-founder, while David has a technical background, having served as a database lead in the original engineering team for the social network VK (Vkontakte) under Pavel Durov. Several other developers and researchers at Octra are also former contributors to VK or Telegram. ^[1]​