Key Points
- Puffer Finance, an Ethereum liquid staking protocol, secured $18 million in a Series A funding round.
- The project plans to use the funds to launch its own mainnet and has a fully diluted token valuation of $200 million.
Puffer Finance, an Ethereum liquid staking protocol, has raised $18 million in a Series A funding round.
The project aims to launch its own mainnet with the funds raised.
Details of the Funding Round
The funding round was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital, with significant contributions from Kraken Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Lemniscap, Mechanism Fidelity, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, GSR, and other angel investors.
According to Puffer co-founder Amir Forouzani, the funding was raised through a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT).
With this latest funding round, the fully diluted token valuation of the liquid staking protocols stands at $200 million.
Puffer Finance has raised a total of $23.5 million in venture capital funding to date.
Puffer’s Position in the Market
Following the funding round, Puffer secured a strategic investment from Binance Labs, enhancing its position within the liquid restaking ecosystem.
Data from DeFiLama shows that Puffer Finance managed to surpass a total value locked of $1.2 billion shortly after the early phase test in February.
Puffer Finance is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol in terms of total value locked (TVL), following Ether.Fi and Renzo.
Puffer’s technology allows Ethereum validators to reduce their staking capital to 1 Ether, a significant drop from the 32 ETH required by individual stakers.
Individuals staking Ether through Puffer are rewarded with Puffer liquid restaking tokens (nLRTs). These tokens enable users to generate yields in various decentralized finance protocols concurrently while earning rewards from Ethereum staking.
“We aim to significantly reduce the barriers for home validators to participate, while delivering the most advanced liquid restaking protocol,” said Amir Forouzani, core contributor at Puffer Labs.
By lowering the entry barrier to only 1 ETH for validators and improving their profits by combining Ethereum’s proof of staking with Actively Validated Services’ (AVS’) restaking yields, Puffer’s mainnet establishes a new benchmark for innovation within the liquid restaking domain.
