Renzo Raises $3.2 Million in Seed Funding, Valued at $25 Million

The Ethereum-based restaking protocol Renzo, built on EigenLayer, has secured $3.2 million in seed funding.

1/ Renzo, @eigenlayer Liquid Restaking Hub, is proud to announce a $3.2M seed round led by @Maven11Capital with participation from @FigmentCapital @SevenXVentures @IOSGVC @bodhi_ventures @OKX_Ventures @0xMantleEco @robotventures @Papervc @ProtagonistXYZ @edessacap… pic.twitter.com/5XOuqIve2z

— Renzo (@RenzoProtocol) January 15, 2024

The round was led by Maven11 Capital, with participation from Figment Capital, SevenX Ventures, and IOSG Ventures. Investors have valued the project, founded in August last year, at $25 million.

Renzo enables users to restake ETH through interaction with EigenLayer. The beta version of the protocol’s mainnet has been operational since last month. Developers plan to add support for liquid staking tokens (LST) in future platform releases.

To begin using Renzo, users must deposit ETH or LST (in the future). In return, the platform issues ezETH liquid restaking tokens, which can then be used in DeFi applications to earn additional income.

“Renzo is a third-generation protocol that supports both native ETH and LST,” noted project co-founder Lucas Kozinski.

He classified platforms like Stader, which only support liquid staking, as first-generation. The second generation includes Ether.fi, which works with ETH in the context of restaking.

According to data on the website, the TVL of the Renzo platform is $44.5 million. For comparison, EigenLayer’s equivalent figure is $1.57 billion, according to DeFi Llama.

“EigenLayer is extremely complex and requires users to select and manage node operators, actively validated services, and countless reward tokens, remaining in these positions for weeks. Renzo abstracts away all these complexities, allowing users to remain liquid in their positions,” explained Kozinski.

The project team will allocate the raised funds for:

• additional audits;
• increasing rewards in its bounty program on the Immunefi platform;
• integrations with other DeFi protocols;
• expanding the team to approximately 10 people.

Plans also include supporting other blockchains in addition to Ethereum and forming a DAO. The launch date for a native governance token has yet to be determined.

As reported, the L2 platform Mantle Network, based on Optimistic Rollups, also interacts with the EigenLayer restaking protocol.