Backing RISE Chain: Scaling Ethereum with Infinite Speed and Decentralization at its Core
At Galaxy, we’ve always believed that Ethereum will form one of the core backbones of a new decentralized financial system, but scaling it to meet mainstream demand remains one of the most important and complex challenges in crypto. As the Layer 2 (L2) landscape continues to evolve, we’re seeing a new design paradigm emerge: parallel execution chains. These systems unlock new levels of throughput while preserving the decentralization that defines Ethereum.
This is why we’re backing RISE Labs, a team building the fastest environment for real time applications on Ethereum. RISE will usher in a generation of high performance Ethereum apps, by providing real-time performance as low as 5ms latency and a 100k TPS target, while maintaining a decentralization-first roadmap. RISE represents a new performance standard on Ethereum without compromising on its core principles.
The Future of Ethereum Scaling: Parallelization Meets Decentralization
Ethereum's current limitations are well understood; slow execution, sequential processing, and expensive state access. And while L2s like Optimism and Arbitrum have made real progress, they’re still bound by the single-threaded execution model of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
RISE is breaking from this mold.
By combining a parallel execution engine, a continuous block pipeline, and based sequencing, RISE is building a new kind of L2 that delivers high throughput and fast finality, while remaining aligned with Ethereum’s decentralization ethos.
Why Parallel Execution Matters
The single-threaded nature of the EVM caps throughput at ~1.25M gas per second. RISE re-architects execution with its proprietary pevm engine, capable of parallel processing transactions across multiple CPU cores. Internal benchmarks show 22x performance improvements with 55 Gigagas/sec throughput on a parallel workload.
This unlocks a whole new class of high-performance applications. from sharded AMMs to AI-powered onchain agents, that simply weren’t possible on traditional EVMs.
Instant Transactions Speeds & Building the Gigagas Era
A core factor in onboarding institutions and people onchain is instant transaction speeds, but that has historically been difficult to build for the industry. RISE solves this with its novel transaction architecture, that’s powered by Shreds and enables transaction latency as low as 5-milliseconds and a 100k TPS target. This is especially important as more financial institutions come onchain to use DeFi products, which require the fastest transaction speeds possible. While TPS is a common headline metric, gas/sec is a core measure of real performance. RISE is targeting over 1 billion gas/sec and over 100,000 ETH transfers per second. This is a step-change improvement from today's L2s and signals the transition into the Gigagas Era.
Decentralization, by Design
Many high-performance L2s sacrifice decentralization for speed, running centralized sequencers or requiring massive hardware to participate in consensus. RISE flips this model on its head with based sequencing, a new architecture that enshrines Ethereum’s validator set as the sequencer.
This means:
No centralized operator.
No super-node hardware requirements.
No single point of failure or censorship risk.
With an architecture that’s designed from day one to become fully decentralized, RISE avoids the technical debt other L2s will face as they try to decentralize later.
Use Case-Led
RISE is building with several key use cases in mind. The plan is to focus on three major use cases at launch:
DeFi: With higher throughput and true decentralization, RISE can support more complex financial protocols that operate efficiently at scale, even during market spikes.
Central Limit Order Books (CLOBs): Crypto volume is still dominated by offchain CLOBs. RISE’s low-latency architecture brings CLOBs onchain with no performance tradeoffs, enabling new forms of spot and perp trading.
AI Agents: With millions (and soon billions) of autonomous agents expected to transact onchain, RISE’s scale and performance makes it the natural home for AI-native finance.
Stellar Team
Part of our excitement around back RISE is the exceptional caliber and connectivity within its founding team. CEO Sam Battenally brings a rare blend of high-frequency trading expertise and engineering leadership. He’s deeply embedded in Ethereum’s research ecosystem, collaborating closely with EF researchers to advance new EIPs and push the boundaries of based sequencing. Co-founders Hai Nguyen and Sasha Mai add complementary strengths in protocol design and growth, drawing from past leadership roles. Backed by an experienced engineering team, and supported by prominent angels like Vitalik, Sandeep, and Stani, RISE is uniquely positioned to drive meaningful technical and ecosystem progress within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Why We’re Backing RISE
RISE Labs is one of the most technically ambitious teams we’ve met in the space. From the RISE client and pevm engine to RISEDB, they’re rebuilding the EVM from the ground up for scalability - while staying true to Ethereum’s values: open, decentralized, censorship resistant.
The Ethereum scaling space is incredibly competitive but also wide open. Most rollups today are stopgaps, not endgames. RISE is building for the long term: a parallel execution L2 that doesn’t compromise on decentralization, performance, or Ethereum alignment.
If you’re a developer building high-performance applications, an ecosystem partner, or simply believe in Ethereum’s mission to scale without centralization we would love to connect.
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