Picasso

Picasso Network was a cross-chain blockchain infrastructure project developed by Composable Finance. Founded in December 2021 and operating under the tagline "Composing DeFi for mass adoption," Picasso began as Composable Finance's Kusama parachain before evolving into a standalone protocol centered on two flagship capabilities: extending the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol to non-Cosmos chains, and enabling native restaking on Solana.

Origins in the Composable Finance Ecosystem

Picasso launched as a Kusama parachain serving as the proving ground for Composable Finance's cross-chain primitives. In Composable's architecture, Picasso handled the low-level settlement and interoperability layer while higher-level tooling such as the Cross-Chain Virtual Machine (XCVM) and the Centauri trustless bridge sat above it. The Picasso parachain hosted modular "pallets" — building blocks that developers could compose into cross-chain DeFi applications — and served as the settlement environment connecting Polkadot, Kusama, and the broader Cosmos ecosystem via IBC.

IBC Everywhere

The project's most consequential technical contribution was bringing IBC to chains that had never natively supported it. IBC is the standard cross-chain messaging protocol of the Cosmos ecosystem, enabling trustless authentication and transport of data, tokens, NFTs, and arbitrary messages between connected chains. Composable Finance developed implementations of IBC for Polkadot and Kusama first, then turned its attention to extending the protocol to Ethereum and Solana.

In April 2024 — approximately two weeks after rolling out IBC to Ethereum — Picasso announced the launch of a live IBC connection to Solana. The implementation was developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of Lisbon and represented a significant technical milestone: it was the first time Solana, which does not natively support IBC, had been integrated into the IBC-connected multichain ecosystem. Users could transfer assets including JitoSOL directly to Osmosis and other IBC-enabled chains in a permission-less, non-custodial manner, without trusted intermediary bridges.

Restaking on Solana

Alongside the IBC extension, Picasso introduced what it described as the first restaking protocol on Solana. Drawing parallels to EigenLayer's model on Ethereum, the Picasso restaking hub allowed holders of SOL and liquid staking tokens (LSTs) to stake their assets to secure Actively Validated Services (AVSes) — third-party protocols such as bridges, decentralized applications, and Layer 2 roll-up systems that required additional economic security guarantees. By restaking through Picasso, SOL holders could earn yield from multiple AVSes simultaneously rather than being limited to base staking rewards.

PICA Token

The native token of the Picasso network was PICA, which served dual roles on two separate chains: as the gas and governance token on the Picasso Kusama parachain, and as the token of the Composable Cosmos Chain. PICA holders could earn a 20% share of bridging fees generated by IBC transfers routed through Picasso's infrastructure, and a 20% share of restaking fees from AVSes secured through the platform. Additional revenue streams included collator staking (earning 25% of transaction fees), validator staking on the Cosmos chain, and participation in the Apollo oracle system.

Total supply was fixed at 10 billion PICA, with 15% allocated to liquidity incentives for Pablo, Picasso's integrated decentralized exchange. Governance was transitioning toward an OpenGov model allowing PICA holders to submit on-chain proposals across five defined governance tracks.

Current Status: Inactive

Picasso Network went dark in the latter part of 2024. The project's official website at picasso.xyz — and the alternative domain picasso.network — both returned NXDOMAIN errors as of July 2026, indicating the domains had lapsed or been allowed to expire. The last published blog posts on the Picasso Network Medium account date to September 2024. The PICA token, which had a total circulating supply of approximately 9.2 billion tokens, showed effectively zero 24-hour trading volume and a nominal market capitalization of under $20,000 by mid-2026 — consistent with an abandoned project.

No official shutdown announcement has been publicly located. The project simply went silent following a period of active development that ran from late 2021 through mid-2024. Its contributions — particularly the first trust-minimized IBC connection to Solana — remain a documented chapter in the history of cross-chain interoperability on Solana.