Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) staking protocol Lido Finance has raised $73 million in recent funding.
The funding was led by crypto enterprise capital agency Paradigm, which purchased $51 million value of LDO tokens from LidoDAO’s treasury by paying the quantity in 15,120 ether (ETH).
The remainder of the quantity, i.e., $22 million, was contributed by a spread of buyers, together with Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, Jump Trading, Alameda Research, Digital Currency Group, and several other others.
Lido is a “liquid” Eth2 staking protocol, which means it permits customers to unlock staked ETH and use it in varied DeFi functions to earn yield. Lido permits that by issuing its native token stETH for each ETH staked through its protocol. stETH is a tokenized model of staked ETH.
With recent capital at hand, Lido plans to facilitate the combination of stETH throughout Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, in addition to different proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains corresponding to Solana and Terra, Lido’s CMO Kasper Rasmussen advised The Block.
Arjun Balaji, Paradigm’s funding companion, advised The Block that the enterprise agency is “excited by Lido’s potential to supply the main decentralized staking resolution for ETH2 and different PoS chains.”
Lido’s staking resolution is decentralized, which means it doesn’t depend on a single occasion’s non-public key administration, corresponding to centralized crypto exchanges’ staking providers. Lido costs a ten% payment on staking rewards, in keeping with info on its web site.
ETH2 is a well-liked asset for staking. The Eth2 staking contract now has more than 4 million ETH, which is value almost $14 billion at present costs, in keeping with The Block’s Data Dashboard.