Subzero Labs has introduced Rialo, a blockchain designed to bridge the gap between the digital world of cryptocurrency and everyday life. Unlike conventional Layer 1, Layer 2, or Layer 3 blockchains, Rialo’s architecture seeks to establish direct real-world connections.
By Karen Z, Foresight News
While digital currencies are increasingly accepted by mainstream finance and individual investors, existing public blockchains often remain isolated within the crypto ecosystem. This disconnect from real-world applications, information, and typical user experiences presents a hurdle for widespread blockchain adoption. Developers also prefer to prioritize application development rather than dealing with complexities such as oracle integration, node maintenance, and handling off-chain data.
Rialo aims to overcome these obstacles, making it easier for developers to create production-ready applications comparable to Web2 development. This facilitates the seamless integration of blockchain technology into real-world processes, much like how smartphones are now an indispensable part of daily life.
What is Rialo?
Rialo is a blockchain solution from Subzero Labs engineered to interact directly with the real world. Its design moves away from the traditional layered blockchain structure. The developers playfully refer to it as “Rialo isn’t a layer 1”.
Ade Adepoju, co-founder of Subzero Labs, explained in Fortune magazine, “It’s analogous to the shift from the iPod to the iPhone. We don’t just need a specialized device for one task; we require a versatile tool incorporating a camera, internet access, and GPS.”
The primary objective of Rialo is to reduce the complexity for those entering the blockchain space, enabling developers from diverse backgrounds to easily build applications. A key feature is its built-in connectivity to real-world data. For instance, developers can access information like FICO credit scores directly within smart contracts without needing external oracles. Moreover, users can utilize familiar login methods such as social media accounts and email addresses, bypassing the need to learn complicated wallet operations.
Fabric Ventures, in their explanation of investing in Rialo, stated that it redefines the focus of Layer 1 blockchains by embedding the necessary functions for real-world developers directly into the protocol. Operations like calls, data transfers, scheduled tasks, and cross-chain interactions are handled natively, rather than depending on external sources. This eliminates the traditional requirement for oracles, cross-chain bridges, indexers, and similar infrastructure.
Team and Funding
Subzero Labs announced a successful seed funding round of $20 million in early August, led by Pantera Capital. Investors also included Mysten Labs, the developers of Sui, Variant, Hashed, Fabric Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Susquehanna, Edge Ventures, and Flowdesk. According to Fortune magazine, CEO Ade Adepoju confirmed that the funding round, completed in the first quarter of the year, involved both equity and token warrants.
The Subzero Labs team boasts experience from leading tech companies and projects such as Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, Mysten Labs, and Solana. Their expertise spans blockchain, artificial intelligence, distributed systems, and hardware development.
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Co-founder and CEO Ade Adepoju: A 30-year-old based in New York City. His background includes work at chipmaker AMD, followed by engineering roles at Dell and Netflix. He joined Mysten Labs as a founding engineer in late 2021 (as of February 2024).
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Co-founder and CTO Lu Zhang: Formerly an engineer at Mysten Labs.
How Rialo Functions
While Subzero Labs hasn’t fully disclosed Rialo’s architecture, the available information indicates its core principles revolve around “integrating RISC-V and Solana VM compatibility,” “reducing friction,” and “native integration.” This can be explained through several key aspects:
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Combining RISC-V and Solana VM compatibility: Rialo seeks to minimize the need for intermediaries like cross-chain bridges and oracles by combining RISC-V smart contracts with Solana VM compatibility.
In April, Vitalik Buterin suggested on the Ethereum Magicians forum replacing Ethereum’s EVM with the open-source RISC-V instruction set to improve scalability. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake’s “Lean Ethereum” vision, released in August, proposes major upgrades to the consensus, data, and execution layers, potentially creating EVM 2.0 based on RISC-V. Buterin elaborated that switching the ZK-EVM to RISC-V could significantly improve Ethereum’s execution efficiency, addressing a major scaling bottleneck and enhancing overall simplicity.
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Developer-Friendly Technical Architecture: In contrast to traditional public blockchains, Rialo is designed with built-in real-world interaction capabilities. For example, a single HTTPS call within a smart contract can retrieve real-time data from any online source, allowing for easy integration of off-chain APIs. Rialo also simplifies smart contract programming by implementing mechanisms like “event-driven” and “asynchronous processing” similar to conventional software development, enabling developers to write clear, standard code.
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Simplified User Experience: Rialo aims to redefine identity management, enabling users to log in using email, SMS, or existing social media credentials as their Web3 identity. Additionally, Rialo will offer encrypted messaging. It also features sub-second transaction confirmations and consistent, predictable fees, avoiding issues like gas fee spikes and front-running attacks commonly seen on traditional public blockchains. Rialo will also support Web2 features such as two-factor authentication and scheduled transactions.
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Ecosystem Synergy: Rialo’s underlying protocol will allow direct interaction with various real-world services like payment systems and weather data. This “native integration” allows Rialo-based applications to address a broader range of applications.
Summary
Encryption technology can only achieve mainstream adoption when its applications are simplified and address common needs.
Rialo still faces hurdles. These include maintaining decentralization while connecting to the real world, balancing decentralization with regulatory compliance, and reconciling data openness with the need for privacy.