Nomura’s digital asset subsidiary Laser Digital has partnered with Kelp DAO to introduce re-staking to Laser’s digital funds. Additionally, Laser Digital is the lead investor in web3 gaming protocol Tevaera’s $5 million funding round.
By now blockchain users are familiar with staking as the way proof of stake blockchains such as Ethereum are secured. Re-staking allows the same committed crypto to be used for staking additional protocols. Eigenlayer, the big re-staking protocol, now has more than $15 billion in value locked (TVL), making it the second largest DeFi protocol after Lido, the liquid staking protocol.
Kelp DAO is the comparatively user friendly way for users to participate in Eigenlayer. It has more than $850 million in TVL with more than 40,000 re-stakers. Laser says its providing a “robust channel for institutional investors to delve into Ethereum’s dynamic market.”
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has some reservations about re-staking. He said he supports “uses of re-staking that do not look like slippery slopes to extending the role of Ethereum consensus”.
Given Laser Digital’s heritage it’s no surprise that it’s interested in funds. It launched an institutional Bitcoin fund last September, and more recently the Digital Polygon Adoption Fund which earns yield by staking Polygon’s token MATIC. Apart from that, it’s a backer of Libre the fund tokenization protocol and Solv V3, the asset management protocol. It’s a prolific investor in the web3 space.
