Hassan Maishera
Kelp DAO, a liquid restaking platform, announced on Wednesday, May 22nd, that it has closed a $9 million private sale round.
In a press release shared with Cryptowisser, Kelp DAO said the funding round was led by SCB Limited (a proprietary trading firm based in the Bahamas) and Laser Digital (Digital asset arm of Nomura Global). Other investors in the round were Bankless Ventures, Hypersphere, Draper Dragon, DACM, Cypher Capital, ArkStream, Cluster Capital, GSR, Longhash, Side Door Ventures, NOIA Capital, HTX Ventures, Avid3, ViaBTC Capital, DWF Ventures, Coinseeker and many others.
Kelp DAO will use the funds to expand to other ecosystems like Solana and Bitcoin (it currently operates on the Ethereum blockchain), and further innovate restaking solutions.
The funding round also showed support from several notable angel investors in the crypto community, including Scott, Cofounder of Gitcoin; Alex, CEO Nansen; Sam K, Cofounder Frax; Marc Zeller, Aave Chan Initiative; Saurabh Sharma, Jump Crypto; Amrit, COO Altlayer; Anthony, Cofounder of Swissborg; Winslow Strong, Mr. Block.
While commenting on this latest development, Dheeraj Borra, Co-founder of Kelp DAO, said,
“This fundraiser propels our expansion in the market and sharpens our focus on building customer-centric solutions. It's truly thrilling to have our investors share that vision.”
Jez Mohideen, CEO of Laser Digital, added their support for the project, added that,
“We are very excited to support Kelp DAO and the passionate team in its journey towards building innovative restaking infrastructure solutions.”
While expressing his enthusiasm, Jack Platts, Co-founder of Hypersphere Ventures, said,
“We’re excited by the prospect of restaking enabling more developer experimentation and use cases. Kelp’s proven team and focus on user experience is playing a key role in this restaking’s early success. We look forward to the team executing on its vision of enhancing yields and optionality for ETH stakers.”
Kelp DAO is a leading liquid restaking protocol with $850M+ in assets under management across 45,000+ restakers. Currently, Kelp DAO facilitates liquid restaking for native ETH and LSTs alike across Ethereum mainnet and 8 L2 networks.
Meanwhile, Laser Digital delivers scalable, robust opportunities across trading, asset management, and ventures. The team works at higher risk management standards, compliance, and commercial viability, all driven by a belief in more responsible crypto innovation.
Finally, SCB Limited is a Bahamian-based proprietary trading firm and an active participant in the digital asset ecosystem.
