The first three months of 2024 brought new milestones, products, and building out our global team. Our team launched new integrations, new networks, and added important features to our staking platform including restaking capabilities.
Major Milestones:
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- Expanded our client list to over 500 institutional customers.
- Our assets under stake exceeded $15B.
- Record growth as we accelerated to 5x compared Q1 2023.
- Launched our Figment Europe Ltd. entity.
- Powered staking rewards for Apex Group’s Ethereum and Solana ETPs.
With these developments, we’re happy to share that we’re well positioned to accelerate growth through the rest of 2024 while maintaining profitability.
The launch of Figment Europe Ltd., our United Kingdom-based entity, marks a significant step in this phase of our global expansion. While Figment has previously had a presence in the region, the incorporation of a UK entity, alongside our expansion to the APAC region last year, demonstrates our commitment to meet customers where they are. We’ll continue to expand our team in the EMEA and APAC regions adding critical sales and customer success roles in the second quarter.
Our efforts to grow operations in Europe also include the addition of validators in Ireland. In our implementation, regions operate independently, with validator keys kept only in one region. This deliberate isolation prevents double signing and slashing events.
Figment Expands Our Global Footprint
In March Apex Group launched Ethereum and Solana ETPs, both of which are powered by Figment’s industry-leading staking service. Broadening access to staking rewards is an important part of what we do, and ETPs are designed to offer institutions a convenient solution through traditional brokers or banks. These ETPs launched on the SIX Swiss Exchange via Issuance.Swiss AG.
Following the ETP launch, we brought our Digital Asset Sidebar to the UK in April, as a complement to Blockwork’s Digital Asset Summit happening the same week. As the creators and hosts, we meticulously designed the event to complement the discussions and themes of DAS London, attracting a diverse assembly of leaders, innovators, and enthusiasts from the blockchain and digital asset communities.
In addition to our flagship gathering, the team also attended a number of other events including ETH Denver, ETH Seoul, Japan Fintech Festival, Global Alts, Peer Summit, DeFi Day, and more, strengthening our connection to the industry and various ecosystems. Find out where our team will be traveling to next.
Staking Innovations: New Networks
During Q1 we launched staking on both Zetachain and Chainflip, while building in the background to support EigenLayer restaking for their Q2 launch.
ZetaChain is a permissionless, Proof-of-Stake, and EVM-compatible omnichain Layer 1 that connects applications built on ZetaChain to all other integrated blockchains within the ecosystem including even non-smart chains like Bitcoin. Learn more here.
Chainflip represents a leap in decentralized finance, offering a novel solution to the complexities of cross-chain asset swaps. The network stands out by facilitating direct, native swaps between different blockchains without the need for wrapped tokens or conventional bridging methods.
Last, but certainly not least, EigenLayer and restaking as a whole took over the industry in the first quarter, continuing our hypothesis that ETH innovations will continue to become more important. Unleashing Ethereum’s trust layer, EigenLayer is a multi-sided coordination marketplace where stakers, operators, and services come together. It is the first restaking protocol built on Ethereum and allows staked Ether (ETH) to be “reused” on other protocols. The ability to intercept stake before it goes back to the staker’s account is what makes EigenLayer possible.
Looking Ahead
Building on the momentum and success we saw in Q1, we’ll continue our efforts and focus on an exciting new product offering called Figment Vaults, as well as restaking Ethereum.
Figment Vaults will simplify institutional ETH staking without compromising privacy or pooling assets. Marketplace and exchange clients will be able to stake any amount of ETH, not only in increments of 32, providing their customers with a seamless and user-friendly experience. Distinct from staking pools, Figment Vaults maintains the privacy of the funds without pooling or commingling. Additionally, clients will be able to choose the geographic location of their validators, a feature not available with traditional pools. Stay tuned for more information on Figment Vaults or meet with us to learn more.
With EigenLayer’s mainnet going live in early Q2, it will introduce the first-ever implementation of restaking on Ethereum. This launch enables ETH stakers to secure additional protocols with their staked assets, opening up new avenues for earning rewards. Figment is live as a mainnet operator and has been participating in the EigenLayer ecosystem since early in its testnet.
In Closing
We want to thank our community, clients, partners, and team for their continued support and hard work. Our commitment to providing comprehensive staking solutions will continue through 2024, servicing the world’s largest asset managers, custodians, exchanges, foundations, token holders, and wallets with our industry leading products and offerings.
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The information herein is being provided to you for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to be, nor should it be relied upon as, legal, business, tax or investment advice. Figment undertakes no obligation to update the information herein.