blockworks.co
Following a successful close of its Series C funding round, blockchain infrastructure firm Blockdaemon said Wednesday it has secured $207 million in fresh capital with a post-money valuation of $3.25 billion.
The round, led by Sapphire and Tiger Global, adds to the firm’s recent Series B where it raised $155 million back in September.
Despite headwinds in the crypto market, funding across major projects — including crypto staking firm Figment’s raise in December and The Sandbox parent Animoca Brands‘ raise this year — show an appetite still exists among savvy investors.
The fresh injection of capital will allow the firm to accelerate strategic acquisitions, continue to develop its product suite and to launch a decentralized finance (DeFi) fund, Blockdaemon said.
To that end, the fund will reinvest earned assets “into institutional-grade DeFi offerings” with a focus on creating centralized financial solutions for its more regulatory conscious customers.
SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which participated in Blockdaemon’s Series B last year, also participated in the round alongside Boldstart Ventures, StepStone Group, Matrix Capital Management and Lerer Hippeau.
Blockdaemon fashions itself as the “foundational layer to the blockchain industry” and provides support for the “institutional backbone” in staking and earning via nodes across more than 50 blockchains.
The firm also said it was partnering with open-source protocol StakeWise to build a liquid staking product on the Ethereum network.
“Over the last 12 months Blockdaemon has seen massive growth across all metrics and raised substantial capital to continue bridging institutions onto protocols,” said CEO and Founder of Blockdaemon Konstantin Richter in a statement.
“We remain committed to leading the way to overall network resilience and open source tooling development as this field of innovation continues to change the way value traverses the world.”
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