Blockdaemon, an independent blockchain infrastructure platform, has closed a Series B funding round of USD155 million with a valuation of USD1.255 billion, making it the world’s largest blockchain infrastructure company for node management and staking.
The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Matrix Capital Management, Sapphire Ventures, and Morgan Creek Digital. This news follows the company’s Series A Round in June 2021 of USD28 million, as well as previous strategic investments, bringing the total to just under USD190 million. Over the last 90 days, Blockdaemon has significantly accelerated its growth and increased its managed node count from 8,000 to 18,000, more than doubling its operational footprint.
Existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Greenspring Associates, CoinFund, Kenetic, Kraken Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Lerer Hippeau increased their investments as part of the B round.
Konstantin Richter, CEO and Founder of Blockdaemon, says: “This latest large infusion of capital is another major milestone for Blockdaemon and will ensure that we continue to revitalise existing financial infrastructure around the globe. We are committed to a future of decentralised financial infrastructure and accelerating the ease of integration to bridge traditional banking to the crypto ecosystem. As regulations get further defined, a backer of the caliber of SoftBank and Masa’s experience is crucial. We are deeply gratified to have the support and confidence of the financial, tech and VC titans who made this latest round possible.”
Blockdaemon is the foundational layer to the blockchain industry, enabling participants to transact, stake and earn via nodes in one simple interface with institutional-grade security, scalability, and reliability. The company supports 40-plus cutting edge blockchain networks including ETH 2.0, Bitcoin, Solana, Terra, Cardano, Polkadot, Cosmos, SKALE, MobileCoin, and the Lightning Network in the cloud and on bare metal servers globally through the Blockdaemon Marketplace. With an ecosystem-first mindset, Blockdaemon powers the institutional back-bone of transactions and yield earnings for tens of millions of registered users across some of the largest exchanges, custodians, investors and financial institutions in the world.
Over the past year, the company’s incredible traction culminated in a 70x increase in valuation, a 20x increase in revenue and a 5x increase in headcount. The company also launched over 10,000 ETH 2.0 validators, has averaged more than USD10 billion in staked assets and expanded to 70 points of presence globally in cloud regions and data centers. Blockdaemon also added multiple layers of risk mitigation with regional and data center diversification over the past year and put into place an insurance guarantee for its customers.
“We believe Blockdaemon is a foundational layer to the blockchain industry, providing a suite of easy-to-use infrastructure products and services to help power the world’s top crypto exchanges, custodians, and funds,” says Nagraj Kashyap, Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We are delighted to partner with Konstantin and the Blockdaemon team to support their mission of making access to blockchain easier and more secure for financial institutions.”
The latest round will help Blockdaemon fund the company’s international expansion to bring on world-class talent in Singapore, Japan, the UK and Germany. In addition, the new capital will allow the company to make strategic acquisitions to build out its already robust tech stack. The next stage of strategy will be to bridge access to protocols via APIs, expand financial reporting capabilities for institutions, and deepen its infrastructure capabilities to ease integration for the next phase of the blockchain ecosystem.
“Goldman Sachs is very pleased to continue our relationship with and investment in Blockdaemon as they continue to innovate for the financial services industry. We believe Blockdaemon has a key role to play in the future of blockchain and crypto adoption,” says Oli Harris, North America head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs.
