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About Thru
Thru is a RISC-V Layer 1 that lets developers write onchain programs directly in C, C++ or Rust, without a new language or proprietary compiler. Its ThruVM supports the RISC-V instruction set natively, block production avoids leader election, and block times are variable. It targets language lock-in, L2 bridge complexity and scaling limits on existing chains.
Moving a general instruction set into a VM means the toolchain and talent pool already exist, at the cost of solving deterministic execution and state growth oneself — the same code must produce identical results across hardware. The project is still at alphanet, its stated mainnet date is unconfirmed, and verifiable public material is mostly architecture notes. For infrastructure at this stage, repository activity and real block data say more than design targets.
Unto Labs, the team behind Thru, completed a $14.4 million funding round led by Framework Ventures and Electric Capital, marking a key early milestone for the Layer 1 project.
The project publicly positioned ThruVM, built on the open RISC-V architecture, as a differentiator from EVM and Solana's BPF, aiming to lower the barrier for Web2 developers.
Thru set an ambitious performance target of 10x Solana's throughput, with the team's prior experience contributing to Solana's Firedancer client lending credibility to this goal.
The funding and technical direction established Thru's long-term strategic focus on bridging Web2 and Web3 use cases, including enterprise and traditional finance applications.
Thru is a RISC-V Layer-1 blockchain by Unto Labs, whose ThruVM lets developers write onchain programs in C/C++/Rust and other LLVM languages; it was founded by ex-Firedancer engineer Liam Heeger. On April 29, 2026, Unto Labs closed a $14.4M round led by Framework Ventures and Electric Capital at a $140M valuation to advance Thru and grow the team.
Through 2026 Thru is in its Alphanet stage, with SDK and CLI available for developers to compile, deploy programs and mint tokens on the RISC-V toolchain. Its leaderless consensus and variable block times target high throughput and low latency, with mainnet once targeted for 2026.
Future strategy and roadmap: Thru is a RISC-V layer-1 built by Unto Labs whose ThruVM lets developers write on-chain programs in LLVM languages such as C/C++ and Rust; in 2026 it is in Alphanet with SDK and CLI already available for compiling, deploying and minting. Next it will focus on ThruVM performance optimization, DeFi primitives and "universal base apps," pursue consensus competition rather than stake accumulation as its scaling path, keep block-producer access open and permissionless, and aim to advance toward mainnet in 2026.
Thru is built by Unto Labs, assembled in San Francisco in late 2024 by two co-founders. Technical lead Liam Heeger started as a core engineer at Jump Crypto, spending about two years on the Solana client Firedancer and owning networking and execution modules; he left in January 2025, was sued by his former employer, and the project was announced only after the two sides settled. He leads the RISC-V based virtual machine and the Thru base layer. Co-founder Will Yoo came from the grocery-delivery company Misfits Market, where he ran market and operations, and now handles ecosystem and commercial functions. Engineering has open-sourced a compilation caching tool, and core members report directly to the two founders.