SaltLayer, a Bitcoin-powered restaking platform, has completed an $8 million pre-seed funding round.
What is SaltLayer?
SaltLayer allows users to earn rewards on their BTC by staking and liquid restaking. Babylon, which recently secured $70 million in a funding round led by Paradigm, powers the ecosystem. The platform allows proof-of-stake systems, including layer-2 chains, rollups, oracles, and data availability layers, to leverage BTC in staking. With SaltLayer, any decentralized application or infrastructure provider can join as Bitcoin Validated Services. Similar to actively validated services, dApps and other providers on SaltLayer offer users the opportunity to lock their BTC for yield.
Earning rewards in idle BTC
Users can deposit their liquid staking tokens to help secure Bitcoin Validated Services (BVS) and, in return, earn rewards and other network benefits. This works when users first deposit Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) or BTC liquid staking tokens from Solv Protocol, PumpBTC, pStake, Lombard, and Bedrock. The WBTC or LSTs help secure BVSs, and users receive receipt tokens representing the deposited funds. Using these tokens, holders can restake via SaltLayer to begin generating rewards.
Participants in the pre-seed funding round
SaltLayer received backing from several crypto-focused venture capital firms. Castle Island Ventures and web3 venture capital firm Hack VC co-led the pre-seed round. Other venture capital firms that backed SaltLayer’s pre-seed round include Franklin Templeton Digital Assets, OKX Ventures, and Mirana Ventures.
SaltLayer aims to use the funding to enter the growing Bitcoin market and develop its restaking products.
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