Andreessen Horowitz invests $100 million in restaking project EigenLayer: Bloomberg

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Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested $100 million in restaking project EigenLayer, Bloomberg reported.
Andreessen Horowitz is reportedly the sole backer in a round expected to be announced on Thursday.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested $100 million in crypto restaking project EigenLayer, according to Bloomberg. The investment is reportedly due to be announced on Thursday, with Andreessen Horowitz the sole backer in the round.

EigenLabs, the team behind the restaking protocol, previously closed a $50 million Series A funding round in March 2023, led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Polychain Capital, among others. The Block reported EigenLabs was seeking to raise $50 million at a $250 million post-equity valuation and a $500 million token valuation at the time.

The news comes despite venture funding declining considerably from a peak of $13.5 billion in Q1 2022, according to The Block Pro’s deals dashboard.

What is EigenLayer?

EigenLayer’s protocol allows users to re-stake validators' ether stakes natively or via liquid staking tokens, allocating those funds to economically secure third-party protocols.

The initial phase of Eigenayer’s protocol was rolled out on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023, allowing users to deposit LSTs from three staking projects: Lido, Rocket Pool and Coinbase. The protocol has since expanded to additional LSTs, including Stakewise’s sETH, Mantle’s mETH, Frax’s sfrxETH, Ankr’s ankrETH and Binance’s wBETH.

Earlier this month, EigenLayer hit around $6 billion in total value locked as its uncapped deposits window drew to a close. It is currently close to hitting $8 billion in TVL, according to DeFiLlama data.

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About Author

James Hunt is a reporter at The Block, based in the UK. As the writer behind The Daily newsletter, James also keeps you up to speed on the latest crypto news every weekday. Prior to joining The Block in 2022, James spent four years as a freelance writer in the industry, contributing to both publications and crypto project content. James’ coverage spans everything from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Layer 2 scaling solutions, avant-garde DeFi protocols, evolving DAO governance structures, trending NFTs and memecoins, regulatory landscapes, crypto company deals and the immersive metaverse. You can get in touch with James on Twitter or Telegram via @humanjets or email him at [email protected].