The Autonomys Network has reached a new stage of maturity. With the foundations of mainnet secure and domains active, attention now turns to evolution — scaling the protocol, expanding its capabilities, and preparing for a fully permissionless ecosystem.
This technical roadmap outlines the next phase of that work: the application interfaces that make the network accessible, the protocol improvements that make it resilient, and the research that ensures it endures.
This roadmap is indicative, not absolute. Priorities may shift as the network evolves, usage grows, and new opportunities emerge from the ecosystem itself.
The Autonomys roadmap focuses on three parallel layers of progress — Application, Protocol, and Research — that together drive the network toward a fully permissionless and scalable architecture.
Application Layer:
Protocol Evolution:
Research:
These developments enable the network to move toward a self-sustaining, permissionless, and community-driven architecture.
“Pay with AI3” has been a consistently requested feature from both the community and partners we have been speaking to. It will allow token holders to purchase storage directly on the network using AI3, simplifying access for builders and users alike.
Beyond convenience, this marks the first step toward the financialization of storage — where network capacity can be programmatically accessed, monetized, and composed into higher-level products and services.
By enabling direct settlement in AI3, we’re laying the groundwork for new use cases that connect decentralized infrastructure to real economic activity. We are excited to see what can be built.
Autonomys is designed for modularity — and lessons learned from our testnet initiatives reinforce the value of separation of concerns. The Auto Portal will continue to evolve as a lightweight interface hub, distinct from explorers and other dApps, focused purely on core network functionality.
Explorers: Now managed through Subscan and Blockscout, providing clear, specialized visibility into both consensus and Auto EVM layers.
Staking Interface: Live and functional, supporting operator/nominator delegation. Usability and scalability improvements are ongoing, especially to handle high-volume operator participation during initiatives like Game of Domains.
AI3 Conversion Interfaces: Currently, executing Cross-Domain Messaging (XDM) transactions requires using the Substrate Portal. A dedicated interface will make this process simpler and more intuitive.
The Auto SDK will introduce dedicated MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers for staking and XDM, enabling integration with agents and AI frameworks via industry-standard interfaces.
One of the most powerful properties of the Subspace Protocol is the ability to support custom runtimes for domains. We plan to provide the tooling, infrastructure, and documentation necessary to make third-party runtime development frictionless.
While demand will shape prioritization, the long-term goal is to enable any developer to build domain types suited to their specific use cases, all while leveraging the shared consensus of the farmer network.
This work dovetails with our ongoing exploration of Data Domain implementations — specialized runtimes that target throughput bottlenecks and push the limits of scalability across storage and execution.
The introduction of chain monitoring brings real-time visibility into the network’s performance and security events. This tool enables automated alerts and observability for events such as:
You can explore the early implementation in our repository.
The system is now being tested — we welcome contributions, feedback, and feature requests from the community.
Operators play a critical role in executing transactions and maintaining domain liveness. However, inactive or unresponsive operators can degrade performance, particularly when heavily staked.
The upcoming “Handle Offline Operators” feature adds logic to automatically detect, mitigate, and remove operators who are no longer participating correctly.
This improvement is a prerequisite for permissionless operators, ensuring domains remain stable and reliable once registration is open to all.
Several smaller issues affecting the farming client are scheduled for resolution in this cycle. None are critical but improving stability and reliability remains a core engineering goal.
Updates will be reflected in both the core client and Space Acres, ensuring a synchronized upgrade path for farmers.
Each domain on Autonomys includes a Substrate layer beneath its execution environment. The new XDM EVM precompile introduces a direct method for cross-domain interactions from within Auto EVM.
Instead of calling consensus functions manually, developers will be able to interact with a precompiled smart contract that handles the Substrate transporter.transfer() function on the EVM layer.
This unlocks native XDM from EVM-compatible tools like MetaMask and ethers.js — making cross-domain interactions faster and more accessible while preserving Substrate’s underlying guarantees.
Now that Mainnet Phase-2 has been delivered we want to get back to the continuation of our domain and staking testing initiative. Engineering resources will continue to support Game of Domains as both a proving ground and a stress-test environment.
Focused Trials of Innovation will target particular facets of the network that our engineers are interested in giving a solid workout.
During the event, the team will monitor operator behavior, network performance, and bug reports — surfacing and resolving issues before mainnet deployment. This ensures future updates are validated under real-world conditions.
After Game of Domains concludes and any relevant fixes are implemented, the network will move toward permissionless participation.
This transition marks a major step in progressive decentralization — shifting decision-making and ownership from managed governance toward open participation.
Autonomys, steered by the Switzerland-based Subspace Foundation, is entering a phase of progressive decentralization, where key decisions and upgrades will transition from managed oversight to on-chain, community-led mechanisms.
In early mainnet, governance remains partially centralized to safeguard network stability. Over time, these controls will give way to on-chain proposals, voting, and delegation frameworks tied to network participation.
Engineering work is required to design and build the core governance primitives that enable this shift — transparent proposal systems, verifiable decision records, and reputation-based delegation.
The end goal is a self-governing protocol — where upgrades, domains, and ecosystem initiatives are directed transparently by the community itself.
As the research for Fast XDM, Data Domain design, and the Protocol Scalability Specification mature, engineering work will focus on translating these outputs into production-ready implementations. This includes preparing prototype environments, defining specification-level changes, and sequencing the upgrades required across runtimes, clients, and tooling.
Implementation will begin only once the underlying designs are validated, ensuring each upgrade aligns with the security, performance, and architectural principles established during the research phase.
These efforts lay the groundwork for the next generation of Autonomys performance — faster cross-domain messaging, higher throughput capabilities, and a dedicated domain model optimized for large-scale data operations.
Cross-domain messaging is central to Autonomys’ modular architecture. Current confirmation times range from 10 minutes (Consensus → Domain) to roughly 1 day (Domain → Domain/Consensus).
The Fast XDM initiative aims to reduce these times to 10–20 minutes without sacrificing security.
This work builds on the fair exchange problem model, which requires either synchronous conditions (implying long confirmation time) or a trusted third party. The proposal suggests using the L1 beacon chain and operator economic security as the trust anchor — a novel design that combines efficiency with strong guarantees.
Research continues with an emphasis on formal verification and minimizing auditing costs, guided by principles of simplicity and robustness.
Quantum computing represents an eventual but existential risk to cryptography. Recent NIST guidance has accelerated the industry-wide shift toward post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms.
We are currently in an investigatory phase, exploring both PQC and information-theoretic (IT) signatures. IT-based approaches, while less common, offer strong security against quantum adversaries with lower overhead — potentially aligning with Autonomys’ performance needs.
This research is early-stage but crucial. The goal is to prepare a migration pathway for when PQC standards mature and to future-proof the network against emerging threats to key cryptographic primitives.
A data domain is a specialized runtime optimized for data throughput, providing a dedicated environment to handle large-scale storage and bandwidth demands.
Design work focuses on ensuring cryptographic integrity while maximizing performance.
Initial specifications are being refined and can be found here. These specs will be fed into the implementation process along with ongoing research support to ensure alignment with long-term project goals.
Scalability is not just about speed — it’s about sustainable flexibility. The upcoming scalability specification defines how the protocol can evolve to support high-volume workloads and dynamic execution across domains.
Unlike PoS (which is permissioned or “less” permissionless), the Subspace Protocol’s PoAS is fully permissionless — though there are hidden networking challenges for almost any scalability design.
This research involves complex trade-offs in data availability, transaction throughput, and validation efficiency. The outcome will form the blueprint for next-generation scaling within the Autonomys network stack.
This roadmap reflects the next phase of engineering progress — deliberate, methodical work that transforms a live network into a truly autonomous one. Each improvement, from Pay with AI3 to Fast XDM and post-quantum research, strengthens the foundation on which open participation will stand.
As Autonomys evolves, so too does its responsibility: to remain transparent, adaptable, and ready for the challenges ahead.
Autonomys isn’t built in isolation; it’s built through collaboration. Developers, operators, and researchers who want to contribute can follow progress on our forum, participate in Game of Domains, or apply for ecosystem grants.
The journey continues, as we scale toward a truly autonomous and enduring network.
