Shared Security in Action: 6 Real-World Use Cases

Instead of building independent validator sets from scratch, many new networks are now relying on shared security models, where decentralized validators are economically incentivized to secure multiple services at once. This creates a flexible layer that’s already giving rise to a wide range of modular networks.

Some of these networks help blockchains interact with each other. Others guarantee fast finality or bring off-chain data on-chain. Some provide execution environments, cryptographic services, or act as neutral watchers of protocol activity.

In this blog, we’ll break down six emerging network types that are actively leveraging shared security and highlight real examples already being built:

1. Interoperability: Enabling secure cross-chain messaging and asset transfers.
2. Finality & Sequencing Layers: Delivering pre-consensus finality and fair transaction ordering
3. Execution Layers: Powering application logic and smart contract execution
4. Oracles: Bridging off-chain data into on-chain environments.
5. Cryptographic Infrastructure: Providing services like MPC, zk proof, and secure computation.
6. Data Availability & Observability: Making raw data retrievable, and monitoring systems for correctness, fraud detection, and relaying.

Let’s explore what each of these does and the networks already using shared security to bring them to life.

1. Interoperability Network’s

As applications expand across chains, the need for seamless communication between ecosystems becomes critical. Interoperability and messaging networks are solving this by enabling secure cross-chain messaging, bridging, and coordination by allowing dApps to operate natively in multiple environments.

Instead of building isolated systems, developers can now launch protocols that interact with multiple chains by default, whether that means passing messages, syncing state, or transferring assets. These networks abstract away the complexity of cross-chain trust, making multichain UX feel like a single environment.

Why shared security matters

The trust assumptions behind cross-chain messaging are only as strong as the validator set securing them. Shared security allows these networks to rely on decentralized validators without bootstrapping their own security to verify messages and protect the system from tampering.

Examples:

• Hyperlane: Cross-chain messaging network enabling multichain app logic through a permissionless and modular validator framework.
• Tanssi Network: Infrastructure that streamlines the deployment of modular rollups while enabling native interoperability between them, serving as the connective tissue of multichain ecosystems.

Hyperlane Restaked Interoperability (Source)

2. Finality & Sequencing Layers

The transaction lifecycle doesn’t end when a user hits “send”. What happens next: how quickly a transaction is considered final and in what order it’s processed can affect security and performance across a blockchain network.

Finality and sequencing layers tackle both of these issues at once. Some offer cryptoeconomic guarantees that a transaction is irreversible even before full layer 1 consensus. Others optimize how transactions are ordered, aiming to reduce MEV and prevent front-running by introducing neutral, decentralized sequencing.

Why Shared Security Matters

Rather than relying on centralized layers or bespoke validator sets, these networks can tap into shared security, leveraging restaked validators to back their guarantees with credible economic weight. Misbehavior, like reordering or false finality, can result in slashing, making these layers more trustworthy and neutral by design.

Examples:

• Mev-commit: Preconfirmation network that guarantees transaction inclusion using cryptographic commitments to reduce MEV extraction.
• bolt: Preconfirmation layer offering near-instant, censorship-resistant transaction inclusion for rollups and modular stacks.
• Radius: A sequencing network that reduces MEV and ordering bias across multiple execution environments.

Radius Sequencing Mechanisms (Source)

3. Execution Layers

At the heart of every decentralized application is logic, a code that needs to run, validate inputs, update state, and coordinate actions. Execution layers are where that logic comes to life.

These networks provide the environments in which transactions and workflows are processed, either directly on-chain (like rollups or appchains) or through orchestrated off-chain compute. Whether it’s a DeFi protocol, a decentralized identity system, or a cross-chain arbitrage bot, execution layers form the operational backbone.

Unlike networks focused on messaging or data delivery, execution layers do the work, and because they’re often tailored to specific application types or performance profiles, they benefit enormously from modularity and shared security.

Why shared security matters

With restaking, execution layers can outsource their consensus to a decentralized validator network. They dramatically lower the barrier to launching secure, custom execution environments while maintaining high levels of trust

Examples:

• Ditto Network: An automation network that executes smart contract tasks based on custom triggers, enabling composable workflow logic.
• Capx AI: AI agent network powering autonomous protocol operations and decentralized decision-making.
• Catalysis: An automation network that coordinates smart contract actions through configurable workflows and onchain intent-based execution.

Capx AI infrastructure (Source)

4. Oracles & External Data Networks

Smart contracts can’t reach beyond the blockchain they operate in, which means they rely on oracles to access real-world information. Prices, timestamps, and even game outcomes all need to be delivered on-chain in a secure, verifiable way.

That’s where oracle networks come in. They serve as trust-minimized bridges between off-chain events and on-chain logic and are essential to everything from DeFi to prediction markets and on-chain automation.

This function is too foundational and sensitive to merge with anything else. Oracles are their own class of infrastructure.

Why shared security matters

The credibility of an oracle depends on its uptime and integrity. With restaked security, oracle networks can enforce economic guarantees around data correctness, slashing validators for downtime or manipulation. This creates a more decentralized and accountable oracle layer without relying on closed or opaque systems.

Examples:

• eOracle: A restaked-native oracle network built for high-throughput and low-latency data feeds, enabling fast and reliable delivery of off-chain information to on-chain applications.

eOracle Infrastructure Overview (Source)

5. Cryptographic Infrastructure

Behind every trustless system lies a cryptographic engine, generating proofs, managing keys, coordinating secure computation, and ensuring that what happens on-chain can be independently verified by anyone

Cryptographic infrastructure networks provide these foundational capabilities. From zero-knowledge proof systems to multi-party computation (MPC), these services make privacy-preserving and tamper-proof applications possible across DeFi, identity, voting, and beyond.

They don’t execute logic. They don’t relay data. But without them, nothing would be verifiable or secure.

Why shared security matters

These systems require strong uptime guarantees and verifiable correctness. Staking validators introduce economic accountability to cryptographic services, ensuring nodes perform as expected and enabling slashing for faulty behavior without relying on centralized coordinators.

Examples:

• Human Network: A threshold cryptography network providing decentralized authentication and privacy-preserving identity infrastructure for Web3 applications.
• Kalypso: TEE-powered prover network generating confidential state proofs and secure off-chain computation.

6. Data Availability & Observability

In decentralized systems, having the right data is just as important as having the right logic. Whether it’s publishing transaction data for rollups or detecting irregularities in cross-chain systems, data must not only be available, but it must also be accountable.

This category brings together two complementary layers:

• Data availability ensures that transaction data is reliably published, enabling verification and trustless execution.
• Watcher networks operate like decentralized auditors, observing, validating, and reporting state changes or anomalies across on-chain and off-chain environments.

Together, they form the nervous system of modular infrastructure, which constantly checks if what’s supposed to happen actually did.

Why shared security matters

Publishing and verifying data both require trust in the actors performing these roles. With staking, these responsibilities are handled by economically aligned validators who can be slashed for downtime, censorship, or invalid state transitions, reinforcing trust without centralization.

Examples:

• Hyve: A modular data availability layer designed to support high-throughput, verifiable applications and rollups.
• Witness Chain: A decentralized verifier network that monitors AVSs and rollups to detect fraud, ensure correctness, and enforce protocol integrity.

Shared Security as the Foundation for Networks

As we’ve seen across six categories, shared security enables flexibility without compromising security. It aligns incentives, reduces fragmentation, and dramatically accelerates the speed at which new infrastructure can launch.

Here’s a final look at the modular network landscape powered by shared security:

Network's being built with Shared Security

These aren’t speculative categories, they’re live networks, building and scaling thanks to shared security. The future of crypto infrastructure is modular, and shared security is how we make it trustworthy.