Ethereum liquid restaking platform Kelp raises token round at $90 million valuation

Kelp DAO, an Ethereum liquid restaking platform based on EigenLayer, has raised $9 million in a private token sale round.

SCB Limited, a proprietary trading firm based in the Bahamas, and Laser Digital (the crypto unit of Nomura Global) led the round with a combined $3.5 million investment, Kelp said Wednesday. Other investors in the round included Bankless Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Draper Dragon, DACM, Cypher Capital, GSR, HTX Ventures and DWF Ventures.

Angel investors, including Scott Moore of Gitcoin, Sam Kazemian of Frax Finance, Marc Zeller of Aave Chan Initiative, Saurabh Sharma of Jump Crypto and Amrit Kumar of AltLayer, also joined the round.

Kelp began raising for the private token round in February and closed it in March, co-founder Amitej Gajjala told The Block. The token's fully diluted valuation was set at $90 million in February, Gajjala said. He noted that this was the FDV when Kelp's total value locked was around $300 million. Since then, Kelp's TVL has grown to around $961 million, so the FDV "may increase" if Kelp were to raise a new round, but it isn't planning one for now, Gajjala said.

KELP token launch timeline

Kelp privately sold its yet-to-launch KELP token in the round, Gajjala said — adding that the DAO expects to launch the governance token "soon" and "is currently going through legal and exchange due diligence."

To be clear, the KELP token is not related to Kelp's KEP, a token representation of EigenLayer points, Gajjala noted. He added that Kelp recently paused KEP claims as "EigenLayer's snapshot logic makes it non-fungible. So it won't be available for claims anymore."

Those who already claimed KEP will get EigenLayer tokens, Gajjala said.

Kelp's expansion plans for Bitcoin, Solana and more

Kelp currently offers an Ethereum liquid restaking platform. With fresh funding in place, it plans to also launch liquid restaking services for other blockchains, including Bitcoin, Solana and BNB Chain, Gajjala said — adding that Kelp expects to launch "1-2 of these chains" in the third quarter of this year.

"We plan to enable native restaking on Kelp from Bitcoin Layer 2 networks," Gajjala said. "We are also evaluating building staking infrastructure on other chains like BNB Chain, Solana, etc. Some innovative solutions like restaking of synthetic Bitcoin/synthetic ETH (based on carry trade) are currently under assessment."

Gajjala and Kelp co-founder Dheeraj Borra also run a liquid staking platform called Stader Labs. Stader currently has a TVL of over $680 million, with the largest share coming from Polygon (MATIC) liquid staking at $504 million, according to DeFiLlama data.

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