Puffer Finance Raises $18M in Series A Funding

Puffer Finance, an Ethereum-based liquid restaking protocol, has raised $18 million in Series A funding from investors like Electric Capital.

Ethereum-based liquid restaking protocol Puffer Finance, co-led by Electric Capital and Brevan Howard, raised $18 million in Series A funding.

Angel investors included Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon, Anthony Ramirez of Wormhole, Yaoqi Jia of AltLayer, and Anton Buenavista of Pendle Finance, in addition to Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Mechanism Capital, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, GSR, and Lemniscap.

According to The Block, Puffer Finance raised $200 million using a SAFT (simple agreement for future tokens) model. This round of funding comes after January announcement of a seed round of $5.5 million. The newly raised funds will accelerate the company’s mainnet debut on Ethereum.

One of the top Ethereum liquid staking protocols, Puffer Finance, is powered by EigenLayer and has a TVL (total value locked) of over $1.1 billion, according to DeFiLlama. Last week, EigenLayer’s TVL surpassed $15 billion, and this announcement follows closely on the heels of that milestone. 

The team at Puffer Finance is certain that their platform can increase Ethereum’s decentralization by attracting more validators to the network.

The company released a statement stating that Puffer’s mainnet sets a new standard for innovation in the liquid restaking landscape by reducing the entry requirement to just 1 ETH and improving validators’ earnings through the integration of Ethereum’s proof of staking with Actively Validated Services’ (AVS’) restaking yields.

Electric Capital’s co-founder and managing partner Avichal Garg agreed, saying that Puffer Finance “ensures broader participation and strengthens the integrity of the network” thanks to its reduced entrance hurdles and improved security measures.

Brevan Howard Digital’s venture head Peter Johnson agrees that Puffer Finance’s infrastructure strengthens Ethereum’s decentralization and security, and he says that his company will continue to “back projects that are pivotal to the growth and resilience of the blockchain ecosystem.”