The funding round was led by U.S. venture capital Finality Capital, along with some startup investment funds such as Orange DAO and ether.fi Ventures.
Apart from Buterin, some notable investors in the blockchain world also put down their money, including Nguyen Thanh Trung, co-founder of blockchain game Axie Infinity.
Rise was founded in 2023 by Sam Battenally from Australia, Nguyen Quang Hai from Vietnam and Sasha Mai Herbert from the U.S.
Battenally serves as CEO, Hai as Chief Technology Officer, and Herbert as Chief Growth Officer.
Rise offers solutions to increase the speed of blockchain transactions by a substantial amount.
Its system can handle over 100,000 transactions per second, among the highest on the market, compared to several hundreds on a typical blockchain platform.
By breaking the current limits in speed, Rise seeks to boost the use of new blockchain applications that will attract more users, the company said.