Quick take:
- The fundraising also attracted participation from dao5, CMS Holdings, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, Matrixport Ventures, and Primitive Ventures.
- The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its Shared Security Protocol on Bitcoin.
- Nathan from Anchorage Digital, Calvin and Jessy from Eigenlayer, and Kevin and Ashwin from Brevan Howard were among those who joined as angel investors.
BounceBit, a BTC restaking infrastructure that leverages the concept of Shared Security Clients (SSC) by integrating restaked assets into their validation semantics has completed a $6 million seed round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Breyer Capital.
The fundraising attracted participation from more than 20 Web3 venture firms including ao5, CMS Holdings, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, Matrixport, IDG Capital, Nomad Capital, OKX Ventures, HTX Ventures, and and DeFiance Capital, among others.
Nathan from Anchorage Digital, Calvin and Jessy from Eigenlayer, Kevin and Ashwin from Brevan Howard, and Smokey from Berachain were among those who joined as angel investors.
According to a blog post posted by BounceBit, the company plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate the development of its BTC staking infrastructure. The announcement comes at a time when crypto restaking protocols are gaining popularity.
Last week, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) invested $100 million in Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer. Earlier on Wednesday, Ether.fi announced a $27 million funding raised across two rounds for its ETH restaking protocol.
Crypto restaking protocols enable holders of staked ecosystem tokens to earn additional rewards by restaking in other protocols and apps within the ecosystem.
According to the announcement, BounceBit has strategically BTCB on the BNB Chain as its primary restaking asset, which also aligns with the protocol’s philosophy of expanding the possibilities within the BTC asset class.
“We’re thrilled to lead the seed round for BounceBit as they’re pushing the frontiers of BTC Restaking and yield generation,” said Ted Breyer, Partner at Breyer Capital.
Aleks Larsen, General Partner at Blockchain Capital added: “There is a huge opportunity to bring DeFi and other innovations to the Bitcoin community through BTC restaking — we’re excited to back BounceBit as they lead the charge.”
BounceBit’s primary innovation is founded on the concept of Shared Security Clients, where it leverages aggregated security by integrating restaked assets into their validation semantics. The company plans to continue exploring more use cases of restaking for the extensive Bitcoin asset class.
The current roadmap is building up to the Testnet launch on March 8, while a Mainnet launch is timely scheduled in April coinciding with the Bitcoin Halving.
Jack Lu, Founder and CEO of BounceBit expressed his excitement for the backers his firm attracted in the seed round. “Their expertise and support will be instrumental in our mission to build restaking infrastructure to support yield generation for all types of Bitcoin across a variety of networks,” Lu said.
The company said it has already reached a TVL of $445 million, barely three weeks after the early access launch.
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