India-based crypto staking startup Stader Labs secures US$4 million in a seed funding round led by Pantera Capital.
The seed funding round also witnessed participation from leading crypto VC firms, including Coinbase Ventures, True Ventures, Jump Capital, Proof Group, Hypersphere, Huobi Ventures, Solidity Ventures, Ledgerprime, and Double Peak Group.
The funding round also attracted several blockchain foundations, including TerraForm Labs, Solana Foundation, and Near Foundation.
Prominent angel investors also shown their confidence in the project. The round received angle investment from Diogo Monica (CEO, Anchorage), Tim Ogilvie (CEO, Staked), Jaynti Kanani (CEO, Polygon), Sandeep Nailwal (COO, Polygon), Nemil Dalal (Head of Crypto, Coinbase), Akash Garg (CTO, Afterpay), Chris McCann (GP, Race Capital), Sumit Gupta (CEO, CoinDCX), Ahmed Al Balaghi (CEO Biconomy), Aniket Jindal (COO, Biconomy), and Harsh Rajat (CEO, EPNS).
Stader Labs
Founded in April 2021, Stader Labs is a platform dedicated to making cryptocurrency staking simpler, safer, and more profitable by eliminating the complexity of staking through end-to-end management solutions.
Staking involves holding funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support the security and operations of a blockchain network. In short, staking is the act of locking cryptocurrencies to earn rewards. Investors who decide to stake their crypto earn rewards because the underlying blockchain puts it to work to verify and secure transactions.
By aggregating staking solutions of all types, including conventional staking, liquid staking, derivatives, gaming and high-yield strategies, Stader Labs helps delegators discover and choose optimal staking opportunities with unprecedented ease.
Stader Labs is led by Amitej Gajjala (CEO) and Sidhartha Doddipalli (CTO), both of whom have extensive track records in scaling technology companies and crypto-related projects across the United States and India.
Amitej Gajjala, co-founder and CEO of Stader Labs, said:
“Sid and I have been passionate about staking and solving challenges faced by stakers, and it is a space that we believe has the potential to become a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Through Stader, we hope to empower cryptoasset staking throughout the financial sector, making it easy and intuitive for investors to stake assets and generate returns. We are grateful for the support of our users and investors as we continue our journey to bring cryptocurrency staking into the global mainstream investment community.”
Stader Labs diversifies risk by staking across an index of validators in one click, allowing investors to maximize their staking returns by tapping into multiple financial products built on top of staked assets. Stader Labs helps networks with their decentralisation agenda through their validator indices while also providing an easy-todiscover platform for small and upcoming validators. With a community of more than 5,000 active members, Stader Labs is currently in use on Terra and is building an MVP on Solana.
Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital, commented:
“Pantera Capital is excited to back Stader Labs as we believe that staking is critical infrastructure for the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The company will provide aggregation and decentralization to staking assets and derivatives across both protocols and validators. We believe that the staking user experience can be improved for both retail and institutions, and Stader Labs is poised to play a major role in the mass adoption of staking solutions.”
“We’re thrilled to welcome Stader to the Terra ecosystem to help simplify the staking process and decentralize the staking distribution across validators on Terra,” said Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs. “Reducing the barriers to staking can unlock significant inflows of capital from mainstream users, benefitting the Terra economy as a whole.”
“Staking is an increasingly important part of blockchain security,” said John O’Connell of True Ventures. “As more consumers onboard into the crypto market, Stader is positioned to offer convenient and superior delegation strategies for users. We’re excited to support Amit, Sid and the entire Stader Labs team.”
Stader Labs Future Plans
Stader Labs plans to use the funds to accelerate product development across multiple blockchains and marketing efforts geared toward a global crypto audience.
Stader Labs intends to launch a number of products and features to assist delegators in maximizing their staking returns with greater ease. Stader Labs also said that it will build native smart contracts for staking on multiple blockchains. It has planned to cover five to six PoS blockchains over the next year, including Near, Polkadot, Ethereum, Matic, and more, while integrating third-party liquid tokens and building automated yield-maximization strategies.
In the long run, Stader Labs plans to build APIs to offer end-to-end staking solutions for exchanges and mainstream fintech apps, tapping into an underserved financial demand for high-quality staking products among retail crypto investors.
