Introduction to the Hyve H3 Protocol
Hyve H3 is a high-performance decentralized data fabric that achieves over 1GB/s throughput, sub-100ms latency, and sub-second finality. The protocol enables decentralized applications to match centralized performance while maintaining cryptoeconomic guarantees.
What Hyve Enables
Hyve unlocks a new class of decentralized applications that were previously impossible on existing storage infrastructure. Perpetual DEXes can operate fully decentralized orderbooks. Social platforms can deliver instant media feeds. DePIN networks can build live data marketplaces. AI agents can access verifiable contextual data in real-time. These applications require performance that existing decentralized storage simply cannot provide.
See Use Cases for detailed examples of what Hyve enables.
How It Works
Hyve separates data storage, consensus, and economic security into three independent layers. The Data Layer handles high-throughput storage through distributed erasure coding. The Liveliness Layer provides fast BFT consensus and continuous availability auditing. The Economic Layer settles all outcomes on Ethereum through Symbiotic, providing ultimate cryptoeconomic security. This separation allows each layer to optimize independently, enabling Hyve to process gigabytes of data per second while the consensus layer handles only kilobytes of metadata.
Explore the Architecture Overview for technical details on how the three layers work together.
Key Innovations
Distributed Edge Encoding
Clients perform erasure coding before sending shares to Data Nodes. When a batch is ready for inclusion, Data Nodes collectively complete the encoding without any single node holding the complete blob. This eliminates the traditional bottleneck where a proposer must replicate entire blobs to perform erasure coding, enabling linear throughput scaling with network size while also maintaining batch verification efficiency.
Variable Retention
Blobs specify expiration epochs rather than permanent storage. Data organized into epoch-based Buckets can be pruned after expiration, reducing costs for ephemeral data while maintaining strong availability guarantees during the retention period. This makes Hyve economically viable for real-time applications that don’t require permanent archival.
Hierarchical Consensus
The protocol separates operational consensus (Liveliness Layer) from economic consensus (Ethereum). Fast off-chain agreement on data availability delivers immediate user-facing finality, while Ethereum settlement provides ultimate economic truth. This hierarchy enables thousands of operations per second without sacrificing the security guarantees that on-chain finality provides.
Continuous Verification
The Data Settlement Protocol ensures continuous data availability through cryptographic challenges. Liveliness Nodes randomly audit Data Nodes throughout each epoch, with results aggregating into availability certificates that settle on Ethereum. This provides real-time guarantees rather than retroactive verification, with immediate economic consequences for failures.