Venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz has raised $70 million for Lido Finance, an Ethereum staking solution. This is the protocol’s first fundraising round since May 2021.
According to a representative for Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm’s investment in Lido is designed to help accelerate the adoption of decentralized staking solutions for Ethereum 2.0.
With the implementation of proof-of-stake (PoS) and other modifications, Ethereum 2.0 signals a substantial shift in the network’s consensus method, potentially enhancing scalability and lowering fees. The switch to Ethereum 2.0, which started in November 2020, is still in progress.
Staking Ether (ETH) presents considerable obstacles, according to Andreessen, given the high threshold for operating a node. Users must be able to stake at least 32 ETH, which is worth over $90,000 at current pricing, to become complete validators.
Andreessen stated it is staking a portion of its ETH holdings on the BNB Beacon Chain using the protocol, in addition to investing in Lido.
The venture business claims that “staking with Lido avoids many of the practical hurdles that institutional investors have faced.”
According to industry data, Ethereum’s BNB Beacon Chain recently registered its 300,000th validator. Nearly 9.7 million ETH have been staked at the time of writing, for a total of $27.1 billion.
Despite the fact that phrases like Ethereum 2.0 and Eth2 are still commonly used in the industry, the Ethereum Foundation declared in January that it will stop using them.
The original Ethereum blockchain is now referred to as the “execution layer,” while the PoS chain is now referred to as the “consensus layer.”
About Lido Finance
Lido Finance, which was founded in 2020, is a liquid staking solution for Ethereum 2.0 that allows customers to stake their ETH with no lockups or minimum deposits.
Lido also supports additional coins, as revealed by Cointelegraph, and has only lately introduced Kusama liquid staking.
In May 2021, Lido completed a $73 million fundraising round sponsored by crypto venture capital firm Paradigm. Alameda Research, Three Arrows Capital, Digital Currency Group, and Alameda Research also contributed.
