The company had a valuation of $50 million when
it had raised its seed round in October last year. Amitej Gajjala, cofounder of Stader Labs, attributed the surge in valuation to early traction that the company witnessed since the product’s launch in November.
“More than 20,000 unique wallets are staking over $ 500 million (in LUNA token) with Stader smart contracts,” Gajjala said. “Huge interest in our strategic sale is a testimony to our initial adoption, speed of execution, and highly talented team.”
Accel India, GoldenTree Asset Management Blockchain.com, Accomplice, Digital Asset Capital Management also participated in the round.
Founded in April 2021 by Gajjala and Sidhartha Doddipalli, Stader Labs is a cryptocurrency staking management platform that is building decentralised financial protocols and applications for efficient stake management on public blockchain networks.
Staking is a way of earning rewards over time by locking cryptocurrency. Investors who decide to stake their crypto earn rewards in the form of synthetic coins because the underlying blockchain puts it to work to verify and secure transactions.
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The startup will use the fresh infusion for cross-chain expansion, hiring and building the developer ecosystem.
The company’s product is currently in use on Terra’s blockchains. It plans to build native smart contracts for staking on multiple blockchains, including Solana, Ethereum and Polygon. It is aiming to cover five to six blockchains over the next year.
It wants to build an economic ecosystem to grow and develop solutions such as yield redirection with rewards, liquid staking, launchpads, gaming and more, the company said.
“These tools will bring Stader closer to its vision to be the most convenient and safe non-custodial staking platform—and a core ally in the future of finance, thanks to its embedded decentralisation for L1s,” said Do Kwon of Terra, in a statement.
