Solana restaking protocol Solayer reaches $80 million valuation with $12 million seed round

Solayer Labs, the developer of the Solana SOL -2.18% restaking protocol Solayer, has raised $12 million in a seed funding round led by Polychain Capital. Other investors in the round included Big Brain Holdings, Hack VC, Nomad Capital, Race Capital, ABCDE and Arthur Hayes' family office Maelstrom, Solayer Labs said Tuesday.

The round closed in May and was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, co-founder Rachel Chu told The Block. The funding round brought Solayer's valuation to $80 million, Chu added.

Earlier this month, Binance Labs said it has invested in Solayer. Chu said the firm's investment is part of the same $12 million seed round. Last month, Solayer also announced a pre-seed funding round of undisclosed size from angel investors, including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

What is Solayer?

Solayer is a Solana restaking protocol modeled after the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol, EigenLayer. Restaking allows users to earn additional rewards by locking up their staked assets again in different protocols, known as actively validated services (AVSs), to maximize their earnings.

Last month, Jito, a Solana liquid staking protocol, also entered the Solana restaking space as the Jito Foundation released the code for Jito restaking, supporting a variety of staked assets, including JitoSOL, other liquid staking tokens or any Solana-based token.

When asked how Solayer is different from other restaking platforms, Chu said, "Unlike EigenLayer and Jito, which initially focus on exogenous AVSs (e.g., cross-chain bridges, oracles, shared sequencers and other non-mainnet systems), Solayer aims to start with native Solana on-chain dApps (referred to as endogenous AVSs) and assist them in reserving block space and prioritizing transaction inclusion based on the amount of stake delegated to them."

For native solana (SOL) restaking, Solayer first converts SOL into an intermediary form called sSOL-raw, the liquid staking token (LST) issued by the stake pool manager, according to its website. The sSOL-raw is then converted to sSOL after another interaction with the Solayer restaking pool manager, the site notes.

Within weeks of its launch, Solayer claims to have restaked over $186 million from around 104,500 depositors, according to its website. It is currently the 13th largest protocol on Solana, according to DeFiLlama .

Solayer plans and token

With fresh funding in place, Solayer plans to expand its team, integrate new protocols and prepare phase two of its platform.

Chu said eight people are currently working for San Francisco-based Solayer, adding that the project plans to hire several more people across functions, including growth, institutional partnerships and engineering.

Solayer also plans to launch its native token in the future, with Chu saying it is "in the works of design."

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