Funding Wrap: Babylon announces $70M raise led by Paradigm

Another week, another slew of venture capital rounds. 

Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon led this week’s raises, announcing a $70 million raise led by Paradigm on Thursday. 

Bullish Capital, Polychain Capital and Galaxy also participated in the round. 

“This latest round of investment will accelerate Babylon’s mission to enable a Bitcoin-secured decentralized economy. Babylon Bitcoin Staking protocol allows PoS systems like PoS chains, [layer-2s], DA layers, oracles, etc., to acquire staking capital from Bitcoin.”

PitchBook analyst Robert Le previously told Blockworks that he believes infrastructure projects will capture the attention of venture capital at this point in the cycle. 

Read more: Let’s talk Bitcoin staking: Babylon’s litepaper

“I still think infrastructure is still underdeveloped,” he told Blockworks at the time, citing prices he’s seen on Base. “There’s no way that we can say infrastructure [and blockchains are] mature when you pay $5 to sign a transaction.” 

“Trustless staking is a novel and fundamental primitive for bitcoin and the broader ecosystem,” Paradigm’s Arjun Balaji said in a statement. He added that the team is “at the frontier of bitcoin innovation.”

The week was quieter on the funding front, though it followed Farcaster’s announcement of $150 million. 

Speaking of Farcaster, Fortune reported that Neynar — which allows developers to build social applications on Farcaster — raised $11 million from Haun Ventures and Coinbase. 

Other notable funding news:

• OpenSocial, an infrastructure layer to build social applications, announced a $5 million seed funding round, which closed in January 2024.*
• DeFi platform Aperture announced a Series A raise, totaling $12 million across its rounds to bring its valuation to $250 million. The raise included Skyland Ventures, and Blockchain Founders Fund. 
• Swiss-based crypto asset financial services company Scrypt announced a $5 million strategic funding round led by Braza Bank. 

*Note: Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz participated in the OpenSocial round.

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