EigenLayer has successfully raised $100 million from a16z crypto.
On the evening of February 22nd, a16z crypto, a prominent investment fund in the cryptocurrency industry, announced a $100 million investment in EigenLayer, currently the largest restaking project in the crypto market.
EigenLayer revealed that their decision to partner with a16z stemmed from shared interests in research and contributions to open-source projects, supporting long-term crypto community initiatives and similar philosophical development goals.
Accelerating Ethereum Together: @eigenlayer ♾ @a16zcrypto
— EigenLayer (@eigenlayer) February 22, 2024
We are excited to announce that Eigen Labs, the core development team contributing to EigenLayer and @eigen_da, has raised $100 million from a16z crypto.https://t.co/M2JQ8HZZ0h
However, EigenLayer did not disclose how they plan to utilize the $100 million investment or the valuation of the project post-fundraising.
Previously, in March 2023, EigenLayer raised $50 million from Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and other funds, valuing the project at $250 million.
EigenLayer operates as a protocol allowing ETH and liquid staking tokens from Ethereum to participate in validating other blockchain networks, fundamentally known as "restaking."
Initially supporting tokens like stETH from Lido, rETH from RocketPool, and cbETH from Coinbase, EigenLayer has expanded its support to include tokens like sETH from Stakewise, mETH from Mantle, sfrxETH from Frax, ankrETH from Ankr, and wBETH from Binance.
Since raising the restaking cap in early February 2024, EigenLayer's Total Value Locked (TVL) surged from $2 billion to $7.9 billion at the time of writing, ranking it among the top 5 DeFi projects by TVL in the crypto industry.
EigenLayer's presence has catalyzed the emergence of a new sector, the liquid restaking token group, featuring entities such as ether.fi, Kelp DAO, and Puffer Finance.
Currently, users and projects engaged in liquid restaking are actively accumulating points from EigenLayer, with opportunities for airdrop tokens from the project.
In addition to restaking, EigenLayer is developing EigenDA, a Data Availability solution for layer-2 networks.
Despite these developments, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan stated in a Bloomberg interview that the project currently has no plans for token issuance.
