“We’re building something for real-world users, ” Ade Adepoju, cofounder and CEO of Subzero Labs, told Fortune. On Friday, the startup announced it had secured $20 million in a seed funding round led by Pantera Capital, a crypto investment firm. Additional investors included Variant, a crypto venture capital firm, Coinbase’s venture arm, and Susquehanna’s crypto trading desk. Adepoju declined to disclose the startup’s valuation. The deal, which closed in Q1 of this year, involved both equity and token warrants—allocations of an as-yet-unreleased cryptocurrency, he explained. From iPod to iPhone Ade Adepoju, 30, based in New York City, has a long background in engineering. Early in his career, he worked at AMD, then at Dell, followed by a stint at streaming giant Netflix. In 2021, he transitioned into crypto, joining the startup Mysten Labs as an engineer. Mysten Labs, founded by ex-Meta developers, is a key player behind the Sui blockchain, whose technology originates from Mark Zuckerberg’s unsuccessful attempt to launch a stablecoin. Adepoju contributed to building Sui from its inception to launch, but in early 2024, he took a career hiatus. “I wanted to step back and really understand what it takes to make a network truly successful, ” he noted. During this period, he teamed up with cofounder Lu Zhang, also formerly at Mysten Labs, and decided to venture into launching their own blockchain. Together, they founded Subzero Labs, which now employs 20 people. While some might question the need for another blockchain amid dozens of active projects, Adepoju argues that existing ones aren’t yet sufficient to support real-world applications. “Asking ‘do we need another one?’ is like asking if we need another iPod, ” he said.

“No, but what we do need is an iPhone. ” He hopes their new blockchain, named Rialo, will be just that iPhone. Rialo—an acronym for “Rialo isn’t a layer 1”—is designed to challenge traditional categorizations. Layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum are decentralized networks that process and store data, with layer 2s built atop them. Adepoju emphasizes that Rialo is neither a layer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, nor 6 blockchain and prefers not to compare it to existing crypto offerings. He describes it as designed for non-crypto developers, enabling engineers to replicate tools typically implemented outside a blockchain. For example, it can access external data such as a FICO score without relying on an oracle, which is an outside data provider. “Cameras used to come separate from laptops. People had to connect external video cameras back in the early 2000s, ” he explained. “Then, they got integrated. This kind of bundling happens with every technology. ”