Breaking Out of the Crypto Bubble
Despite headline-grabbing rallies on Wall Street and Main Street, blockchains still live in a self-referential loop—disconnected from everyday services, data, and user habits. Developers, meanwhile, would rather ship products than wrestle with oracles, node upkeep, and off-chain plumbing.

Enter Rialo, a new chain purpose-built for the real world by Subzero Labs. It refuses to label itself Layer 1, 2, or 3; the official expansion of the acronym is simply “Rialo isn’t a layer 1.”

iPod ➜ iPhone: The Analogy
Subzero co-founder Ade Adepoju told Fortune: “We don’t need another device that only plays music—we need the iPhone moment, one gadget that fuses camera, GPS, and the web.” Rialo’s ambition is the same: a single platform where blockchain disappears into the background, letting teams ship production-grade apps as effortlessly as they once deployed web services.

Native Real-World Plumbing
Rialo bakes everyday essentials directly into the protocol:

• Smart contracts can call HTTPS endpoints—grab a FICO score without an oracle.

• Users log in with email, SMS, or existing social IDs; no seed-phrase boot camp.

Fabric Ventures, an investor, explains: “Calling an API, scheduling a timer, or moving data across chains becomes a native instruction, not an external bridge or indexer. Oracles and bridges may simply become obsolete.”

Team & War Chest

• Seed round: $20 M led by Pantera Capital, joined by Mysten Labs, Variant, Hashed, Coinbase Ventures, Fabric, Mirana, Susquehanna, Edge, Flowdesk.

• Cap table: mix of equity and token warrants, closed Q1 2025.

The team hails from Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, Mysten, and Solana, bringing deep expertise in distributed systems, AI, hardware, and crypto.

• CEO Ade Adepoju, 30, NYC—ex-AMD, Dell, Netflix; founding engineer at Mysten Labs (2021-2024).

• CTO Lu Zhang—former Mysten Labs engineer.

Under the Hood (What We Know So Far)
Rialo has not yet published a full white-paper, but early teasers reveal three design pillars:

1. RISC-V + Solana VM Compatibility

• Eliminates reliance on bridges and oracles.

• Aligns with Vitalik’s April 2025 Ethereum Magicians post proposing RISC-V as the foundation for a leaner, faster EVM 2.0.

2. Developer UX That Feels Like Web2

• Single-line HTTPS calls inside smart contracts pull real-time data.

• Event-driven and async programming models mirror traditional software stacks.

3. End-User UX That Hides the Chain

• Sub-second finality, flat & predictable fees.

• 2FA and scheduled transactions—familiar Web2 guardrails.

• Encrypted messaging baked in.

Real-World Lego Bricks
At the protocol layer, Rialo exposes native hooks to payment rails, weather APIs, and other off-chain services. Apps can therefore span on-chain and off-chain logic without bespoke middleware.

The Road Ahead
If onboarding feels as simple as downloading an app, blockchain may finally escape the crypto echo chamber. Yet big questions remain:

• How will Rialo preserve decentralization while integrating tightly with centralized services?

• How will it balance openness with privacy and compliance?

For now, Rialo is the boldest attempt yet to give blockchain its iPhone moment—and the real world its first truly invisible chain.

Breaking Out of the Crypto Bubble
Despite headline-grabbing rallies on Wall Street and Main Street, blockchains still live in a self-referential loop—disconnected from everyday services, data, and user habits. Developers, meanwhile, would rather ship products than wrestle with oracles, node upkeep, and off-chain plumbing.

Enter Rialo, a new chain purpose-built for the real world by Subzero Labs. It refuses to label itself Layer 1, 2, or 3; the official expansion of the acronym is simply “Rialo isn’t a layer 1.”

iPod ➜ iPhone: The Analogy
Subzero co-founder Ade Adepoju told Fortune: “We don’t need another device that only plays music—we need the iPhone moment, one gadget that fuses camera, GPS, and the web.” Rialo’s ambition is the same: a single platform where blockchain disappears into the background, letting teams ship production-grade apps as effortlessly as they once deployed web services.

Native Real-World Plumbing
Rialo bakes everyday essentials directly into the protocol:

• Smart contracts can call HTTPS endpoints—grab a FICO score without an oracle.

• Users log in with email, SMS, or existing social IDs; no seed-phrase boot camp.

Fabric Ventures, an investor, explains: “Calling an API, scheduling a timer, or moving data across chains becomes a native instruction, not an external bridge or indexer. Oracles and bridges may simply become obsolete.”

Team & War Chest

• Seed round: $20 M led by Pantera Capital, joined by Mysten Labs, Variant, Hashed, Coinbase Ventures, Fabric, Mirana, Susquehanna, Edge, Flowdesk.

• Cap table: mix of equity and token warrants, closed Q1 2025.

The team hails from Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, Mysten, and Solana, bringing deep expertise in distributed systems, AI, hardware, and crypto.

• CEO Ade Adepoju, 30, NYC—ex-AMD, Dell, Netflix; founding engineer at Mysten Labs (2021-2024).

• CTO Lu Zhang—former Mysten Labs engineer.

Under the Hood (What We Know So Far)
Rialo has not yet published a full white-paper, but early teasers reveal three design pillars:

1. RISC-V + Solana VM Compatibility

• Eliminates reliance on bridges and oracles.

• Aligns with Vitalik’s April 2025 Ethereum Magicians post proposing RISC-V as the foundation for a leaner, faster EVM 2.0.

2. Developer UX That Feels Like Web2

• Single-line HTTPS calls inside smart contracts pull real-time data.

• Event-driven and async programming models mirror traditional software stacks.

3. End-User UX That Hides the Chain

• Sub-second finality, flat & predictable fees.

• 2FA and scheduled transactions—familiar Web2 guardrails.

• Encrypted messaging baked in.

Real-World Lego Bricks
At the protocol layer, Rialo exposes native hooks to payment rails, weather APIs, and other off-chain services. Apps can therefore span on-chain and off-chain logic without bespoke middleware.

The Road Ahead
If onboarding feels as simple as downloading an app, blockchain may finally escape the crypto echo chamber. Yet big questions remain:

• How will Rialo preserve decentralization while integrating tightly with centralized services?

• How will it balance openness with privacy and compliance?

For now, Rialo is the boldest attempt yet to give blockchain its iPhone moment—and the real world its first truly invisible chain.