Overview

Helios is a non-custodial execution infrastructure for decentralized finance.
It provides a unified API for routing liquidity, executing transactions, and coordinating cross-chain actions with built-in risk awareness.

Helios abstracts execution complexity—not custody—allowing applications to interact with fragmented DeFi markets through a single, composable interface.

What Helios Does

Helios helps applications execute transactions reliably across DeFi protocols and blockchains.

Specifically, Helios provides:

• Aggregated access to on-chain liquidity

• Deterministic execution routing

• Pre-execution risk evaluation

• Cross-chain transaction coordination

• Gas and fee estimation

• Programmatic execution primitives via APIs and SDKs

Helios is designed to be embedded into products, backends, and protocol workflows.

What Helios Does Not Do

Helios is intentionally limited in scope.

Helios does not:

• Custody assets

• Manage private keys

• Act as a wallet

• Guarantee execution outcomes

• Guarantee pricing or yields

• Replace protocol-level logic

All transactions are initiated and signed externally, then executed on-chain.

Core Design Principles

These principles define how Helios is built and how it should be used.

Non-Custodial Architecture

Helios never takes custody of funds or private keys.
Execution requests reference user-signed transactions or externally controlled accounts.

Explicit Execution

Helios exposes execution primitives rather than implicit automation.
Developers control when, how, and under what constraints execution occurs.

Risk-Aware Routing

Execution paths are selected using live market and protocol signals, not static rules or best-quote logic alone.

Modular Systems

Execution, routing, risk analysis, and gas estimation are decoupled components.
This minimizes coupling and limits failure impact.

Core Concepts

The following concepts are referenced throughout the documentation.

Execution

An execution represents a request to perform a transaction or coordinated set of transactions.

An execution may involve:

• One or multiple protocols

• One or multiple chains

• One or multiple routes

Executions return structured, machine-readable results that include status, routing details, and execution metadata.

Liquidity Aggregation

Helios aggregates liquidity across supported protocols and venues.

For a given execution, Helios:

• Evaluates available liquidity

• Estimates slippage and fees

• Determines optimal routing paths

• Optionally splits routes for efficiency

Developers do not need to query each liquidity source directly.

Routing

Routing determines how an execution is carried out.

Routing logic evaluates:

• Liquidity depth

• Price impact

• Fee structure

• Risk signals

• Network conditions

Routes can be simulated prior to execution.

Risk Intelligence

Risk intelligence provides execution-time safety signals.

Signals may include:

• Changes in protocol TVL

• Liquidity volatility

• Upgrade or governance events

• Oracle dependencies

• Historical exploit patterns

Risk signals influence routing decisions and can prevent execution under unsafe conditions.

Chain-Agnostic Execution

Helios provides a unified interface for multi-chain execution.

Applications can:

• Initiate cross-chain actions

• Abstract bridge selection

• Receive a single execution response

Helios coordinates execution without assuming custody at any point.

Gas & Fee Estimation

Helios estimates gas requirements and execution fees.

This includes:

• Gas cost estimation

• Fee breakdowns

• Priority configuration

• Cross-chain fee considerations

Gas handling is treated as part of execution reliability.

Integration Model

Helios typically sits between:

• Applications / Services

• On-chain protocols and liquidity venues

Integration is possible from:

• Backend services

• Frontend applications

• Supported smart contract environments

Helios integrates with existing wallet and signing flows.

Environments

Helios supports multiple execution environments.

• Testnet — for development, testing, and simulation

• Mainnet — for production execution

Environment selection is controlled per API request or configuration.