Layer 1 blockchain Pharos Network has launched an Agent Native upgrade that brings AI-powered interactions and agent infrastructure to its RealFi-focused chain, starting with sponsored transactions on Testnet, a natural-language agent widget, the Pharos AI portal and a partnership with AnvitaMate.

The company has disclosed $52 million in total funding. That includes an $8 million seed round led by Lightspeed Faction and Hack VC in 2024 and a $44 million Series A raised in 2026, according to the company's own disclosures.

Founded by former Ant Group executives, Pharos positions itself as a financial-application layer 1, covering tokenized real-world assets, institutional markets, payments and AI-agent activity. It brands this ecosystem "RealFi" — a stack that connects TradFi, DeFi and cross-chain liquidity through EVM-compatible infrastructure and parallel execution.

What does the upgrade actually ship?

The first release centers on two products. The Pharos Port Agent Widget allows users to query real-world asset positions, vault maturity, yield and redemption windows in natural language. The developer portal combines three components:

• Pharos Chain MCP — a Model Context Protocol integration for chain access
• Developer Docs MCP — documentation tooling for agent builders
• SkillEngine — a framework for composing agent capabilities

The AnvitaMate collaboration extends the rollout beyond Pharos' own tooling.

The design goal is operational, not cosmetic. Pharos wants agents capable of holding assets, using tools and paying for their own onchain activity — a requirement for any automated DeFi or tokenization workflow that must run without a human signing each transaction. Sponsored transactions on Testnet remove the gas-payment bottleneck for early agent deployments.

Why does agent infrastructure matter for RealFi?

Tokenized real-world assets impose scheduling constraints that suit automated agents: vaults have maturity dates, yields accrue on fixed cycles and redemption windows open and close. An agent that can read those states and act on them — rebalancing, claiming yield or triggering redemptions — compresses operational overhead for institutional users managing onchain positions.

Pharos' EVM compatibility also lowers integration costs. Developers building against existing Ethereum tooling can port agent logic without rearchitecting, while parallel execution addresses throughput requirements for high-frequency agent activity.

What comes next on the roadmap?

The company has set a staged timeline:

• Q4 2026 — PoS staking and Testnet gas sponsorship
• 2027 — Agent Accounts and additional agent-focused infrastructure
• 2028 — a fully integrated Agent-Native stack

That schedule places Pharos roughly two years from its end-state architecture, with staking arriving after the initial agent tooling rather than before it — an ordering that suggests the network is prioritizing developer adoption over validator economics in the near term.

The competitive context is tightening. Multiple layer 1 and layer 2 teams are racing to support AI-agent wallets and payments, and Pharos' RealFi focus is its differentiator. Whether institutional tokenization flows materialize on agent infrastructure will depend less on the widget demos and more on whether Agent Accounts, slated for 2027, deliver custody and permissioning models that regulated institutions can actually sign off on.