Pantera and Archetype co-lead $12.5 million Series A funding round for Obol Labs

Obol Labs, a startup aiming to make proof-of-stake blockchains more secure, raised $12.5 million in Series A funding. 

Investment firms Pantera Capital and Archetype co-led the round, with additional participation from BlockTower, Nascent, Placeholder, Spartan and IEX, the company said in a statement. Obol's prior investors, Coinbase Ventures and Ethereal Ventures, also joined the round. 

Obol Labs intends to make proof-of-stake blockchains more secure with its Distributed Validator Technology, which allows multiple machines to simultaneously run an Ethereum proof-of-stake validator.

"To make networks more secure, staking must be decentralized by design," Obol Labs co-founder and CEO Collin Myers said. "Obol's DVT brings decentralization and resiliency to the ground floor of staking products."

The firm is focusing on Ethereum for its proof-of-stake security scaling, with plans to address Cosmos and Ethereum L2 networks in the future. The latest round brings the company's total financing to $19 million.