About helixstreet
helixstreet is a Polkadot SDK chain and the operating team behind it. We build infrastructure for consented genomic and proteomic data — consent receipts, eligibility proofs, provenance for derived datasets — and advise pharma and biotech on what blockchain actually does well in a life-sciences workflow.
The chain itself coordinates; the sequences stay in HIPAA- and GDPR-bounded enclaves. We secure blocks on Polkadot coretime, compose with the wider DOT ecosystem over XCM v5, and track JAM, Midnight, SUI and post-Pectra Ethereum for primitives that change what's possible.
Based in Switzerland, for the regulatory reasons
The helixstreet foundation is a Swiss foundation. Switzerland's data-protection regime, its clarity on token-economic activity, and the FADP / GDPR-equivalence framework matter more than the postcode.
Why Switzerland specifically
The Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP, in force Sept 2023) and its FDPIC oversight give a defensible jurisdiction for handling consent receipts that touch EU-resident genomic data., and the proximity to ETH Zürich/EPFL bio-IT groups is genuinely useful.
The Foundation does not claim partnership with the Cardano, Web3, or Ethereum foundations also based in the canton. Geographic neighbours, not co-signatories.
Governance, honestly stated
Day-to-day operations — validator, RPC, advisory engagements — are run by the helixstreet team. Protocol parameters and treasury decisions move to on-chain OpenGov-style voting at mainnet launch. Until then, "decentralized" overstates what we are; we'd rather be a clearly accountable team than a fake-decentralized one.
Protocol upgrades land via runtime upgrades; tracks, weights and conviction multipliers are spelled out in the (forthcoming) governance pallet docs.
A Polkadot SDK chain on coretime
Built with the Polkadot SDK, secured by Polkadot's shared validator set via coretime, with a forward path to JAM services once the upgrade lands.
Polkadot SDK + coretime
The Polkadot SDK (Substrate + Cumulus + Polkadot Node, merged) gives us a sovereign runtime. Agile coretime — live since late 2025 — lets us scale block production with workload instead of paying for an idle parachain slot.
Eligibility proofs, not raw genomes
Production zk-SNARKs over full VCF files do not exist yet. What does work, post-Icefish (IACR 2026/463): narrow circuits proving sequence alignment, GWAS verification, and study-inclusion eligibility. That's the layer we build against.
XCM v5 interoperability
XCM v5 (current as of Polkadot 2.0) lets helixstreet move authenticated proofs and consent receipts to chains that already do identity (KILT), encrypted storage (Crust), or IP-NFT settlement (Bio Protocol on Ethereum, bridged) better than we ever would.
Bioinformatics-aware pallets
Pallets for VCF anchoring (hash + schema + jurisdiction tag), proteomic dataset registration, federated kinship coordination in the style of SF-Relate, and consent-receipt extrinsics with scoped expiry.
Provenance, not ownership
"Owning DNA" is a legal nonsense outside narrow jurisdictions. What helixstreet records is provenance: a signed, timestamped chain of who contributed which dataset, who granted access, what was computed, and what came out — verifiable by anyone, including regulators.
Operated by people, not "a DAO"
We run our own Polkadot validator and a public RPC endpoint. No third-party node rental, no anonymous multi-sig. See the infrastructure page for the stash, hardware, and on-call contact.
Boundless biological vision. Relentless engineering execution.
01 · The Grand Vision: Elevate Life on Earth & Carry It to Mars
Our long-horizon mission is to advance all forms of life and health, enhance human biology, and cryptographically preserve the genomic blueprints of Earth's species as humanity expands toward Mars. By sealing genomes in salted Merkle trees and SHA-256 ledgers, altering a single base pair changes the root hash — giving us mathematical, tamper-evident proof of authentic, original life. NO LIMITS AT THE FRONTIER OF AI, GENOMICS & PROTEOMICS.
02 · Relentless Execution — Proven in Code, Not Noise
We are measured by systems in production: winner of Best Architectural Design in Google's All Things Agentic Hackathon ($180,000 prize pool · 12,260 participants · 78 judges), Polkadot validators consistently graded A+ with top-tier slot inclusion and era performance, and public RPC nodes delivering 100.00% availability at the lowest latencies on the network. WE DELIVER REAL RESULTS — NOT LINKEDIN AND TWITTER NOISE. WE DELIVER.
03 · AI-Native Architecture & Radical Lean Speed
A focused, senior engineering core amplified by a governed fleet of autonomous AI agents. No bloated committees, no performative roadmaps, and zero organizational drag — WE DO NOT OVERTHINK. WE JUST DO.
& Discovery
HelixGroups: Collective Intelligence
Helixgroups are decentralized communities of individuals with shared genetic traits, health conditions, or research interests. These groups collaborate to advance drug development, establish safety baselines, and contribute to medical research without intermediaries.
By pooling genetic and health data under transparent, consensus-based governance, helixgroups can accelerate disease research, improve pharmaceutical trials, and enable discoveries that benefit millions.
Each group member retains complete ownership and control over their data, with fine-grained permissions managing who can access, analyze, or reference their genetic information.
On-Chain Governance & Validation
helixstreet employs a dual-validation model where all data connections require explicit consent from both contributing parties and approval from decentralized governance.
Dual-Party Validation
Every proposed connection between genomic datasets must be validated by both data providers. This cryptographic consent mechanism ensures that relationships are established only with explicit permission from all parties involved.
The protocol records all consent events immutably, creating an auditable trail of who approved what data connections at what time.
- Cryptographic consent signatures from all parties
- Revocable permissions with temporal controls
- Immutable audit trail of all approvals
- Fine-grained access controls and delegation
On-Chain Governance
Protocol changes, fee structures, and research priorities are governed through on-chain voting where token holders and community members participate in decision-making.
Governance decisions are enforced automatically through smart contracts, eliminating the need for trusted intermediaries and ensuring transparency in all protocol changes.
- Democratic voting on protocol parameters
- Treasury management by community vote
- Transparent upgrade mechanisms
- Dispute resolution through decentralized arbitration
What's live, what's next
Dated milestones, not vibes. If something here doesn't ship in the quarter listed, it gets moved with a note on why.
Polkadot validator helixstreet.foundation/2 in the active set: 0% commission, 35.6k DOT self-bonded, 124 nominators backing 1.6M DOT, A+ grade on turboflakes ONE-T, a 366-day active-set streak at 100% uptime. Public RPC endpoints for Polkadot and Kusama, archive nodes, rpc-spec-v2, 100% uptime.
Testnet pallet for consent receipts — signed grants with scope, expiry, and revocation. ZK eligibility-proof verifier on testnet, with Icefish-style circuits for sequence-alignment and CRISPR-target match.
Won Best Architectural Design in Google's All Things Agentic Hackathon — one of the largest AI agent hackathons ever held, with $180,000 USD in prizes, 12,260 participants, and 78 Google & GDE judges — for helixstreet — autonomous genomic fleet: an event-driven five-agent pipeline on Google ADK, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemma 4 31B, and DeepVariant on Cloud Batch with a hash-chained Firestore audit ledger and Merkle genome vault. Read the architecture note →
Mainnet candidate on Polkadot coretime (bulk core for steady-state, on-demand cores for proof bursts). XCM bridge to KILT for researcher credentials; XCM to Crust for encrypted ciphertext storage.
Federated kinship coordinator integrating SF-Relate-style HE protocols. Provenance-rail integration with Bio Protocol for IP-NFT settlement of helixstreet-anchored derived datasets.
JAM migration — once the upgrade flips on Polkadot, helixstreet ports core services to JAM's Refine/Accumulate/onTransfer entry points. Backward-compat path for existing pallets is in the CoreChains service spec.
Pharma & biotech engagements
In parallel with running the chain, helixstreet advises large pharmaceutical companies on where blockchain genuinely helps a life-sciences workflow and where it doesn't. The chain pays for the lights; the engagements keep us honest about what the chain should actually do.
What we do for clients
Scoped architecture reviews. Reference implementations on testnet (consent flows, audit trails, IP-NFT settlement, supply-chain attestations). Written deliverables with citations, against a defined exit criterion. We don't sell tokens, NFTs, or a "platform"; we sell time, and we say no to engagements where blockchain is the wrong tool.
Where we say no
Raw genomes on chain. "Tokenize the patient." Anonymous DNA marketplaces. AI-on-genomes-on-chain stacked-buzzword pitches. Production zk-SNARKs over full WGS files. Re-identification-resistant "anonymous" SNP datasets — the literature settled that one already (Gymrek 2013, Erlich 2018).
What we benchmark against
helixstreet is Polkadot-native by design, but life sciences is a 20-year problem. We keep instrumented testbeds against the platforms most likely to change the calculus for a specific workload.
Ethereum
Post-Pectra, post-EIP-7702 Ethereum keeps gaining ground for settlement gravity and IP-NFT mass — Bio Protocol, VitaDAO and the rest of the funded DeSci stack live there. We track L2 privacy stacks (Aztec, Linea zkEVM) as candidate venues for parts of the consent-receipt flow if the latency wins.
Midnight (Cardano sidechain)
Midnight's privacy-first design and selective-disclosure semantics map well to consented health data. Worth watching for shielded-state primitives that could host parts of the consent-grant model that don't need full Polkadot interop.
SUI
SUI's object model and parallel-execution scheduler are interesting for high-throughput attestation streams — the kind of workload a multi-site trial produces. We benchmark consent-flow throughput here as a sanity check on our coretime assumptions.
JAM (within Polkadot)
The forward path inside our own ecosystem. Gray Paper conformance work is well-advanced; mainnet flip pending OpenGov. Our migration plan keeps the existing pallet surface stable through the CoreChains compatibility service.
Our Core Values
Decentralization
No single entity controls genomic data or research outcomes. All governance decisions are made collectively through transparent on-chain mechanisms.
Data Ownership
Individuals retain complete ownership and control of their genomic information. Permission and access rights are granted explicitly and can be revoked at any time.
Open Science
helixstreet advances scientific knowledge through transparent, collaborative research. Discoveries benefit the entire community, not proprietary interests.
Health Impact
Every design decision prioritizes patient welfare and accelerates the discovery of treatments and cures for genetic diseases and conditions.
Accessibility
helixstreet is available globally to researchers, patients, and participants. No geographic or economic barriers limit participation in health research.
Equity & Justice
We commit to ensuring that the benefits of genomic research are distributed fairly and that historically marginalized groups have voice in data governance.