Stader Labs, a cryptocurrency staking management platform, has raised $4 million in its seed funding round led by Pantera Capital.
The round also saw participation from Coinbase Ventures, True Ventures, Jump Capital, Proof Group, Hypersphere, Huobi Ventures, Solidity Ventures, Ledgerprime, and Double Peak Group.
Several blockchain foundations also participated in the round including TerraForm Labs, Solana Foundation, and Near Foundation along with angel investors including Diogo Monica, CEO of Anchorage; Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Staked; Jaynti Kanani, CEO of Polygon; and Sandeep Nailwal, COO of Polygon.
Other include Nemil Dalal, head of crypto at Coinbase; Akash Garg, CTO of Afterpay; Chris McCann, GP at Race Capital; Sumit Gupta, CEO of CoinDCX; Ahmed Al Balaghi, CEO of Biconomy; Aniket Jindal, COO of Biconomy; and Harsh Rajat, CEO of EPNS.
Founded in April 2021 by Sidhartha Doddipalli and Amitej Gajjala, Stader Labs focuses on cryptocurrency staking management by building decentralised financial protocols and applications for efficient stake management on public blockchain networks.
“Through Stader, we hope to empower crypto asset staking throughout the financial sector, making it easy and intuitive for investors to stake assets and generate returns,” Amitej Gajjala, co-founder and CEO of Stader Labs, said.
Staking is a way of earning rewards for holding certain cryptocurrencies, similar to depositing money in a bank, in that an investor locks up their assets and in exchange earns rewards or interest.
On Thursday, India welcomed its second crypto unicorn CoinSwitch Kuber in less than two months after getting its first, CoinDCX.
Last month, LayerZero, a multi-blockchain omnichannel interoperability protocol firm, raised a $6 million funding round co-led by Binance Labs, the venture capital firm and incubator of Binance, and Multicoin Capital.
In July, Singapore-headquartered crypto platform Vauld raised $25 million (Rs 186 crore) in a Series A round of funding led by Peter Thiel-backed early-stage technology venture capital firm, Valar Ventures.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency adoption has also been growing in India, despite regulatory uncertainties. According to an October report from blockchain research firm Chainalysis, the country ranks amongst the top three in the world in terms of crypto adoption. Chainalysis noted that Indian investors were more mature than Pakistan and Vietnam — the other two in the top three — with more institutional investors joining the market.