Nava Completes $8.3M Seed Round, Led by Polychain Capital and Archetype

On April 14, crypto startup Nava closed an $8.3 million seed round to build a "trust layer" for its autonomous payment system, per Fortune. The funding was led by venture firms Polychain Capital and Archetype. Nava CEO and co-founder Vyas Krishnan noted in an interview: “As more such tools hit the market, AI agents will naturally begin autonomously executing transactions, originating deals, and managing economic activity. We aim to position ourselves as a trusted system for real funds in financial workflows.” Nava’s core fix for AI agent “misbehavior” is a custody system: funds are temporarily locked before an agent proposes a transaction. Once the agent submits a transaction, Nava uses a verification framework to check if the outcome matches user intent. If validated, the transaction executes; if not, funds stay in the custody account. Nava records and publishes the approval/rejection decision logic for every transaction on-chain, creating a public decision ledger for other AI systems to reference. Currently, Nava runs as a Layer 3 blockchain on Arbitrum, and Krishnan noted the system will also deploy in parallel on Tempo. Long-term, Nava’s autonomous commerce validation layer could pave the way for an AI agent insurance market—per the project’s whitepaper. Nava also plans to launch a native stablecoin to “underwrite agent behavior via the protocol.”