By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 29th, 2024
The technology employed by Puffer Finance allows Ethereum validators to reduce their staking capital to 1 Ether, dropping significantly from the 32 ETH required by individual stakers. Puffer is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol in terms of TVL.
Liquid staking projects in the Ethereum ecosystem have been in demand and Puffer Finance is making the most of it. In the latest development, Puffer Finance built atop the Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer secured $18 million in a Series A funding round to launch its own mainnet.
As per the announcement on Tuesday, April 16, Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital led the funding round along with key contributions from Kraken Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Lemniscap, Mechanism Fidelity, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, GSR and other angel investors.
As per Puffer co-founder Amir Forouzani, the recent funding round happened through a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). With this latest funding round, the liquid staking protocols fully diluted token valuation stands at $200 million.
So far, Puffer Finance has raised a total of $23.5 million in venture capital funding. Furthermore, data from DeFiLama shows that shortly after the early phase test in February, Puffer Finance managed to surpass a total value locked of $1.2 billion.
“Following this round, Puffer secured a strategic investment from Binance Labs, enhancing its position within the Liquid Restaking ecosystem,” said Purffer Finance adding that the technological advancements have been in tandem with the mainnet launch.
Ethereum Restaking Protocols in the Limelight
With the launch of the EigenLayer last year, the Ethereum restaking protocols have been stealing the limelight. As a result, several eigenLayer-based platforms have come into existence over the last year. After Ether.Fi and Renzo, Puffer Finance Puffer Finance is the third-largest liquid restaking protocol in terms of total value locked (TVL).
The technology employed by Puffer Finance allows Ethereum validators to reduce their staking capital to 1 Ether, dropping significantly from the 32 ETH required by individual stakers. Furthermore, 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.
The project stated that 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.