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Babylon staking protocol announced that it has raised 18 million dollars in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital and Hack VC. According to the announcement made on December 7th, other investors include Framework Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, OKX Ventures, and Symbolic Capital.
David Tse, the co-founder of Babylon and a professor of engineering at Stanford University, stated that the fundraising process started at the end of July and has now been completed. Tse explained that this round had a similar structure to the seed funding round of 8 million dollars announced in March, and refrained from commenting on the company valuation in this round.
The Babylon protocol will allow Bitcoin holders to stake their assets on a proof-of-stake blockchain network and earn returns. The protocol will enable the creation of a stake asset within the Bitcoin ecosystem for PoS chains. Babylon aims to enhance the security of PoS chains by leveraging the security measures of Bitcoin.
Currently, PoS chains are secured by capital derived from their native tokens. However, this capital can be costly, especially for new chains because it requires high staking rewards and inflation rates to attract capital to the platform.
Tse mentioned that during this process, Babylon had discussions to support the Cosmos Hub and Polygon networks. Sandeep Nailwal, a co-founder of Polygon, stated that Babylon has contributed to the Polygon CDK and the overall Polygon ecosystem. He noted that integrating Babylon’s solutions into Polygon’s staking hub has increased the security of new chains, and eliminated inflationary pressures found in traditional staking models.
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