Binance Labs continues to pour capital into the StakeStone staking project
Binance Labs venture capital fund continues to "bet" on the Liquid Staking sector with an undisclosed funding for the StakeStone project.
On the afternoon of March 25, 2024, Binance Labs venture capital fund announced an undisclosed investment in the StakeStone project, a liquid staking protocol and omnichain liquidity connection infrastructure for new ecosystems.
Notably, this is Binance Labs' fourth consecutive capital injection into the staking/restaking segment, following Renzo Protocol, Puffer Finance, and Babylon.
StakeStone introduces itself as an "omnichain liquidity distribution network" capable of integrating various yield layers - including Ethereum staking, restaking, real-world assets (RWAs), as well as artificial intelligence (AI). and decentralized physical asset infrastructure networks.
Singapore-based StakeStone currently supports Ethereum staking on its platform. When users stake ETH on StakeStone, they will receive STONE, a yield-bearing token, which can be further used to receive additional rewards.
Charles K, co-founder of StakeStone, said his project is more than just a basic liquid staking protocol. In the future, StakeStone plans to support more asset types and support Bitcoin staking with the profitable token "STONE BTC".
At the time of writing, StakeStone currently has a total value locked (TVL) of nearly 1.18 billion USD, an increase of 6 times compared to the figure of 195 million USD 3 months ago.
Despite challenging market conditions where institutional investor (VC) cash flow into cryptocurrencies in 2023 decreased by 36% compared to 2022, Binance Labs still had a busy and productive year. results with more than 20 funded projects.
Binance Labs, a 10 billion USD incubation fund, has quietly separated itself from Binance to operate independently. Since the beginning of 2024, it has maintained its performance in investment activities, especially favoring the liquid segment. restaking, including the Bitcoin Babylon staking protocol and the Ethereum Renzo and Puffer Finance restaking protocols. The latest is the ether.fi staking project also launched on Binance Launchpool.
Currently, EigenLayer can be said to be the pioneering project introducing the restaking model to the cryptocurrency community, especially attracting more attention after receiving a capital of 100 million USD from the famous investment fund a16z crypto.
Also this month, Binance Labs invested in 7 more startups through the Incubation Program season 6, including:
Cellula strategy game platform
Derivatives DEX on zkSync Derivio
Stablecoin issuer Ethena Labs
AI-powered content platform NFPromp
UXUY DEX
AI-powered web3 knowledge sharing platform QnA3
Shogun DeFi Protocol
Operating mechanism and highlights of StakeStone
The structure of StakeStone can be understood from three different perspectives:
STONE: similar to LSTs like stETH but Stone makes it easier to connect blue-chip assets and different DeFi protocols across multiple blockchain chains.
STONE-FI Layer (STONE-FI): Are DeFi projects built on interest-bearing assets on all blockchains.
Mechanism of action of StakeStone
Unlike other LSD-fi protocols, StakeStone introduces a new concept called LSDb (Liquid Staking Derivatives basket). When users Stake ETH on the protocol, they will receive LST called $STONE.
This concept aims to provide higher ETH Stake returns compared to single assets such as stETH. It achieves this by leveraging multiple revenue streams and high-quality assets, such as Maverick, Lido, Curve, etc.
Compared to other LSTs, STONE is more compatible with the underlying assets, making it a notable choice.
