RISE Chain Raises $8M to Challenge Ethereum Layer 2 Speed Limits

RISE Chain, a real-time Ethereum scaling solution, secured a fresh $4 million investment from Galaxy Ventures. This strategic round boosts the project’s total funding to $8 million. 

The latest capital will help accelerate its push toward mainnet and support next-gen decentralized apps demanding lightning-fast speed.

Founded on the idea that speed and decentralization shouldn’t be tradeoffs, RISE is building a Layer-2 blockchain that challenges industry standards. It has already attracted support from crypto’s biggest names—Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin and AAVE’s Stani Kulechov among them. Now with Galaxy backing it, RISE is moving into the spotlight as a serious contender to dominant L2s like Arbitrum, Base, and the emerging MegaETH.

A New Era of Blockchain Performance

The primary goal of RISE is to bring “Infinite Speed” to onchain applications. It does so with its signature innovation—Shreds. Shreds allow sub-blocktime transaction confirmations, achieving latencies as low as 5 milliseconds. 

The testnet has already crossed 2 billion transactions and processed over 50,000 in a single one-second block. It breaks the long-standing blockchain performance ceiling. Projects like high-frequency trading platforms, real-time gaming protocols, and DeFi orderbook systems finally get the speed they need—without giving up decentralization or security.

Galaxy Ventures, the venture capital arm of Galaxy Digital, sees RISE as a critical infrastructure upgrade for Ethereum. In the words of Neil Bhuta, Investor at Galaxy Ventures:

“RISE is the first project we’ve seen that addresses the scalability trilemma without material security tradeoffs.”

RISE promises to scale Ethereum without compromises. It reportedly retains decentralization, delivers real-time performance, and ensures trustless operation. 

Built for High-Speed dApps

The core differentiator of RISE lies in its architecture. It’s not just about speed for speed’s sake. It’s about enabling apps that couldn’t previously run onchain. These include:

• Orderbook-based exchanges
• Options platforms
• High-frequency DeFi strategies
• Real-time gaming
• Interactive social platforms

CEO Sam Battenally calls this design philosophy essential for blockchain’s next chapter:

“Performance is only meaningful if it lasts. RISE was built to stay fast—forever.”

Securing the Future With Ethereum

RISE is aligned with Ethereum in a deep way. The roadmap includes Based Sequencing to use Ethereum’s validator set for syncing activity across chains and Secured Shreds to economically guarantee transactions via Ethereum validators.

This design ensures that RISE doesn’t introduce central points of failure or censorship risks. It enhances Ethereum’s base layer by adding the one thing it lacks—instant performance.

RISE launched its public testnet in early June and quickly gained traction. Over 2 billion transactions later, the network has proven its technical viability. The next step is mainnet, and that’s where this $4 million investment will make the difference.

According to the team, RISE is actively onboarding developers via its portal. The network is ready for teams that want to build the kind of apps that were once impossible to run on Ethereum alone.