Series B Institutional & Strategic Round Represents Largest to Date for Any Staking Provider
Investing In Growing Our Headcount and Expanding Our Scope of Services
We are pleased to announce that in Q2 we raised $50 million from both Institutional and Strategic partners in the largest funding round to date for any staking provider.
Led by Senator Investment Group and Liberty City Ventures with participation from Galaxy Digital, Anchorage Digital, Declaration Partners, Bonfire Ventures, 10T Holdings, JPK Capital, 40 North, Finality Capital Partners, GSR, GFT VC, and Hard Yaka, the capital raised will be used to grow our headcount and diversify the breadth of services we provide up and down the Web 3 stack.
The investment round further solidifies our industry-leading role in building Web 3 and accelerates our ability to assist the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) industry with the development of back-end systems and infrastructure that provide yield on digital tokens and other assets.
It also speaks to institutional investors’ support of – and demand for – platforms that help create and support Proof of Stake assets that can produce a yield as well as appreciate in value like Bitcoin, Ether and other digital assets.
“This funding round marks the start of a new chapter at Figment that aligns with the evolution of the industry. PoS has gone from proof of concept to mainstream and is being adopted by investors and developers at a massive scale.
Our 100+ institutional clients and billions in AUM is just the beginning for us. Our belief is that the majority of value and data will be exchanged, settled, and stored on PoS blockchains. We will continue to make this space more accessible and approachable to the next generation of Web 3 investors and developers. In doing so, we believe Figment solidifies itself as one of the most well-established and trusted platforms executing on this mission.”
Lorien Gabel, Figment CEO
“We are thrilled to be supporting Lorien, Figment and their team of blockchain experts. Staking is a massively important and mission critical part of the blockchain ecosystem and Figment is at the forefront of this technology.”
Emil Woods, Partner at Liberty City Ventures
State of the Industry
The PoS industry has seen explosive growth this past year. The launching of Ethereum 2.0 and other PoS layer 1 protocols like Polkadot, Solana, and Terra have made it clear that PoS is here to stay, and for good reason. PoS is an energy efficient, accessible, and democratic form of building and reaching consensus. Investors and developers are starting to take notice.
A recent JPMorgan report estimated that staking could become a $40 billion industry by 2025. The desire to earn a real positive yield from staking was one of the main factors for the expected growth of the industry.
The number of developers building on PoS protocols has grown significantly as well. A recent report by Electric Coin Capital stated that the fastest growing blockchain ecosystems in terms of developer activity are Cosmos and Polkadot.
“Proof of Stake and the ability to earn yield will be an important catalyst in driving further institutional interest in the digital asset industry.”
Mike Novogratz, CEO and Founder at Galaxy Digital
These are not just trends and we expect PoS to become the dominant consensus mechanism within the next year.
Our Growth
Being profitable since 2019, this year we experienced 20x quarter over quarter growth, reached over $7B in digital assets staked to our infrastructure across the 40+ networks that we support, and have grown to supporting over 100+ institutional clients.
We have seen PoS become increasingly attractive to a wider array of investors seeking yield in the digital asset space. Our enterprise-grade infrastructure, SLAs, and slashing insurance allow our clients to participate in PoS networks safely and securely across a growing range of networks that support the diverse ecosystems being built above them.
“Anchorage is happy to support Figment’s growth. Institutions come to us excited to stake and need companies like Figment to support their participation in the crypto ecosystem.”
Nathan McCauley, Co-founder and CEO, Anchorage Digital
As we grew horizontally to support new networks, we also grew vertically as well. A healthy blockchain ecosystem, like Ethereum, requires applications being built and used by network participants. This usage increases the demand for the underlying token, which in turn increases the value of the tokens our clients have invested in.
This is why we built out our DataHub platform allowing developers to seamlessly deploy their applications to multiple Layer 1 & 2 protocols. Our DataHub platform now supports hundreds of development teams doing billions of requests a month across 15 PoS networks.
“Figment is a vanguard in Proof of Stake, and we are excited to further cement our relationship with them in this strategic round.”
Michael Jordan, Principal of Investments at Galaxy Digital
As we continued to scale, we have grown our research and educational teams to further support the investor and developer communities within the PoS ecosystem. Our recent commitment to bringing The Graph to more blockchain ecosystems and our newly created capital arm further cements our dedication to building Web 3.
“Figment is the leader in delivering turn-key infrastructure solutions that are critical to driving the next stage of institutional blockchain adoption. The company abstracts the operational and technical complexity of blockchain implementation, and allows its customers to focus on their core business, providing immediate ROI.”
Stan Miroshnik, Partner at 10T Holdings
Looking Ahead
The future of Web 3 is multi-chain. These interconnected Proof of Stake networks will form the foundation of a new, and healthier Internet that will dramatically change how we interact and exchange value with each other online.
With Ethereum fully transitioning to PoS, the market cap of the PoS industry will double overnight. DeFi, NFTs, everything on Ethereum will be secured and settled via PoS. This monumental shift will make DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain payment rails more sustainable than their traditional counterparts.
“We believe in a multi-chain ecosystem relying on Proof of Stake and other complex validation mechanisms. Staking is becoming an increasingly important infrastructure layer, and Figment is a leader in institutional staking, governance, and software solutions for token holders, token foundations, and dApp developers.
Lorien and his co-founders are seasoned technologists and serial entrepreneurs with decades of experience together building and monetizing companies. This Series B funding will help Figment continue to attract top talent and build cutting-edge solutions to support innovation in the crypto community.”
Doug Silverman, Managing Partner at Senator Investment Group
We will continue building on this foundational technology by scaling our infrastructure horizontally and vertically across the PoS industry further supporting token holders and developers investing and building on Web 3.
About Figment
Figment’s purpose is to build a better Internet by increasing usage of the next generation of Proof of Stake blockchains.
These efficient blockchains give people greater control of their data, more privacy, and increase financial inclusion. By eliminating intermediaries they also limit the power of centralized data monopolies, rent seeking financial institutions and anti-social algorithms.
We bring our mission to reality by helping investors stake their tokens; earn yield and participate in securing the blockchain. Our Hubble and Prime applications as well as our governance expertise allow token holders to analyze, monitor and make informed decisions. We build Web 3 developer communities via our Learn education program and then make it simple for these developers to launch applications and manage smart contracts via our DataHub platform. And finally by building and operating The Graph based indexers we enable the efficient search and querying of blockchain data.
