Andreessen Horowitz invests $100 million to rebuild EigenLayer project: Bloomberg
According to Bloomberg, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested $100 million in cryptocurrency restoration project EigenLayer. The investment is expected to be announced on Thursday and the sole backer of this round is Andreessen Horowitz.
EigenLabs, the team behind the re-staking 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 that EigenLabs was looking to raise $50 million at an equity valuation of $250 million and a token valuation of $500 million at the time.
The news comes despite venture funding down significantly from a high of $13.5 billion in the first quarter of 2022, according to The Block Pro’s trading dashboard.
Venture capital. Image: Block Pro.
What is EigenLayer?
EigenLayer’s protocol allows users to re-stake a validator’s Ether stake natively or through liquid staking tokens, allocating those funds to economically secure third-party protocols.
The initial phase of the Eigenayer protocol was launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2023, allowing users to deposit LST from three staking projects: Lido, Rocket Pool, and Coinbase. The protocol has since expanded with additional LSTs, including Stakewise’s sETH, Mantle’s mETH, Frax’s sfrxETH, Ankr’s ankrETH, and Binance’s wBETH.
Earlier this month, EigenLayer reached a total valuation of about $6 billion as it neared its unlimited deposit window. According to DeFiLlama data, the current TVL size is close to $8 billion.
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