Solv Protocol secures $11m strategic funding to drive BTC staking

Binance Labs-backed Solv Protocol has closed an $11 million strategic funding round with the aim of bringing Bitcoin staking to more investors.

The funding round, which attracted a number of venture capital firms including Nomura’s Laser Digital and Blockchain Capital, brings the Bitcoin (BTC) staking platform’s total funding to $25 million. Other participants included gumi Cryptos Capital, OKX Ventures and CMT Digital.

Solv Protocol said in its Oct. 14 announcement that the new fundraise was at a $200 million valuation.

Bitcoin’s growing DeFi market

Solv Protocol plans to use the capital injection to support further adoption of Bitcoin staking through the Staking Abstraction Layer. With SAL, Bitcoin holders can stake their coins across multiple protocols and chains to take advantage of various staking opportunities in the growing decentralized finance market.

Despite the increase in Bitcoin staking and the emergence of platforms such as Solv Protocol and Babylon, the Bitcoin staking market remains significantly behind Ethereum (ETH). The dominance of the Ethereum network in the staking ecosystem is due to the huge traction of Lido and EigenLayer, among other platforms.

However, Solv Protocol is looking for new momentum in bringing Bitcoin staking opportunities to holders of the largest digital asset, which currently has a market cap of over $1.3 trillion.

“Bitcoin’s staking rate is currently much lower than Ethereum’s 28%. If we can unlock similar levels of participation, Bitcoin staking could unlock $330 billion in value. We believe BTCFi will drive the next wave of innovation in the blockchain space.”

Ryan Chow, co-founder and chief executive officer of Solv Protocol

Currently, SolvBTC has withdrawn over 20,000 Bitcoins with a total value locked of more than $1.3 billion. In the announcement, Solv Protocol said this value was staked across 10 blockchain networks.

In September, Solv Protocol expanded its Bitcoin staking service to Base, the Ethereum layer-2 chain launched by Coinbase. The platform offered Base users the chance to participate in Bitcoin DeFi via the wrapped token cbBTC, which Coinbase introduced that month.