Terra-focused Stader Labs Raises $12.5M, Hits $450M Valuation
The platform offers services to earn rewards with Terra, but will offer staking with Solana, Ethereum 2.0, Cosmos and Near in the future
Blockworks exclusive art by Axel Rangel
key takeaways
- The company plans to use the funds to grow the staking ecosystem and add seven to 10 new blockchains over the next 12 months and expand into other consumer segments, Founder Amitej Gajjala said
- The company aims to have $10 billion assets under management by the end of the year, a 1,900% increase goal from current levels, he said
Staking-focused Stader Labs raised $12.5 million in a strategic round, valuing the company at $450 million, the company’s Founder Amitej Gajjala told Blockworks in an interview.
The company plans to use the funds to grow the staking ecosystem and add seven to 10 new blockchains over the next 12 months and expand into other consumer segments, Gajjala said.
The round was led by Three Arrows Capital and additional investors include Blockchain.com, Accomplice, DACM, GoldenTree Asset Management, Accel, Amber, 4RC, Figment and angel investors like Prabhakar Reddy, co-founder of FalconX and Matt Cantieri, GM at Anchor Protocol.
In October 2021, Stader raised $4 million from Pantera, Coinbase Ventures, Jump Capital, True Ventures, Hypersphere, Proof, Ledger Prime, Huobi Ventures, Solidity Ventures and Double Peak.
The platform offers services to earn staking rewards with Terra through its smart contracts, but will support other chains like Solana, Ethereum, Fantom and Cosmos in the future. Its two core products are Stake Pools, where users can stake in pre-defined baskets of validators grouped by performance, and Liquid Staking, where users receive a liquid token (LunaX) when staking to participate in yield-boosting DeFi strategies.
Since the company launched Nov. 23, 2021, it has over 20,000 unique wallets staking on its platform and about $500 million Terra has been staked with Stader Labs, Gajjala said. The majority of those staking with the company are retail investors, but there are some funds on Terra staked with Stader, too, he added.
“The objective is to build an economic ecosystem to grow and develop custom solutions such as yield redirection with rewards, liquid staking, launchpads, gaming, and more,” the company said in a statement.
Gajjala said the company aims to have $10 billion in assets under management by the end of the year, with the goal of a 1,900% increase from current levels.
“In a nutshell, we want to be the AWS for staking infrastructure,” Gajjala said. “We want to create staking smart contracts that can be customized for different use cases,” he added.
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