A security-focused blockchain startup based on Proof-of-Stake, Obol Labs закрыл a Series A round of $12.5 million. It was led by Pantera Capital and Archetype.
Funding was also provided by BlockTower, Nascent, Placeholder, Spartan, Coinbase Ventures, Ethereal Ventures and IEX.
The total amount raised by Obol Labs reached $19 million.
The startup develops DVT. It enables running the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake validator across multiple machines by splitting the private key.
“To make networks more secure, staking must be decentralised by design. DVT provides decentralisation and fault tolerance,” — said Colin Myers, co-founder and CEO of Obol Labs.
Running a validator as a cluster of nodes means greater staking resilience:
- validators are less likely to go offline;
- validator keys are less likely to be compromised;
- there is a lower risk of network-wide correlation if validator clients have bugs.
The startup currently supports Ethereum. In the future, it plans to integrate Cosmos and L2-solutions for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Obol Labs is actively working with liquid staking providers to deploy DVT across their operator sets.
The startup’s community numbers nine thousand users in more than 20 countries. They run software on the Goerli testnet via DV Launchpad.
In January, the MetaMask team integrated a non-custodial wallet with liquid staking services Lido and Rocket Pool.
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