Puffer Finance, a burgeoning liquid staking initiative based on the Ethereum restaking protocol Eigenlayer, has successfully raised $18 million in a Series A funding round.
This significant financial injection is aimed at facilitating the launch of its mainnet.
The funding round, as announced on April 16, saw participation from a variety of investors including industry heavyweights such as Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital, along with contributions from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Lemniscap,
Franklin Templeton, and Avon Ventures—a venture capital fund linked to Fidelity Investments’ parent company. Other notable investors included Mechanism, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, GSR, and several angel investors.
The announcement detailed how Puffer Finance had achieved a milestone shortly after its preliminary test phase in February, amassing over $1.2 billion in total value locked (TVL) according to DefiLlama.
To date, the project has garnered $23.5 million in venture capital.
“Following this round, Puffer secured a strategic investment from Binance Labs, enhancing its position within the Liquid Restaking ecosystem,” the company stated.
The announcement also highlighted upcoming “technological advancements” set to coincide with the mainnet debut.
Puffer Finance’s innovation significantly lowers the entry threshold for Ethereum validators by reducing the required capital from 32 Ether to just one.
Users who stake their Ether through Puffer are rewarded with Puffer liquid restaking tokens (nLRTs), which can be used concurrently in other decentralized finance protocols to farm yields while still earning Ethereum staking rewards.
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This method, known as liquid staking, has previously been utilized by other blockchains like Cosmos and has recently been adopted by Ethereum following the network’s transition to a proof-of-stake model through the Merge upgrade.
“We aim to significantly reduce the barriers for home validators to participate, while delivering the most advanced liquid restaking protocol,” Amir Forouzani, a core contributor at Puffer Labs, commented.
In related news, Eigenlayer, the protocol on which Puffer Finance is built, recently surpassed Aave in TVL, as reported by Cointelegraph on March 6.
Following a temporary lift on staking caps, the protocol attracted $10.4 billion in crypto assets.
Additionally, data from Dune Analytics reveals that Eigenlayer boasts over 107,900 unique depositors, with DefiLlama statistics indicating that 74% of the staked tokens comprise Wrapped Ether (wETH) and Lido Staked Eth (stETH).
The liquid staking sector has grown substantially, now standing as the largest DeFi protocol category with nearly $55 billion in locked value spread across roughly 160 protocols, dominated by Lido, which alone accounts for $35 billion.
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