Unstable Protocol is working to revolutionize the rapidly growing Liquid Restaking Token Finance (LRTfi) space, having raised $2.5 million in its most recent seed investment round. Several ETH-aligned funds, including Lattice, Laser Digital (Nomura Group), Blockchain Founders Fund, Assouline Ventures, Agnostic Fund, Artichoke Capital, Black Edge Capital, NewTribe Capital, and NxGen, have invested in the project, which is building the leverage layer of (re)staked Ether.
The Protocol also received support from a number of well-known angel investors, protocol executives, media partners, and KOLs, including Wes Cowan (Juice Finance), Tony Jiang (Cognition AI), Adil Virani (blitz.gg), Collin Goltra (YGG), Peter Huo (Whampoa Digital), Andy (TheRollup), Tian Zeng, and BlockBuilders (MarketAcross).
Users may employ liquid staking and restaking tokens for creative yield techniques to optimize returns using LRTfi, a subsector of DeFi. With the funds it has collected, Unstable plans to fuel its innovative zkOracles and act as the first leverage layer for staked and restaked ether.
The previous year has seen the LRT market develop at an astounding rate of almost $50 billion, going from almost nothing to about $15 billion in only three months.
Unstable Protocol is an LRTfi-native lending protocol that lets users borrow against their (re)staked ETH and even use it to enhance Layer-2 blockchain functionality. The latter is made feasible by a strategic alliance with Axelar, an interoperability platform whose leadership team has already backs Unstable.
Mansoor Madhavji, Partner at Blockchain Founders Fund stated:
“Unstable’s pioneering use of zkOracles to enhance DeFi utility for the LST and LRT ETH market is exactly the kind of forward-thinking technology that will push the entire ecosystem forward. We look forward to seeing the impact this will have on liquid staking and the broader DeFi landscape.”
EigenLayer AVS balance proofs and a zkSNARK-based validator power Unstable’s lending protocol engine, which values collateral according to its underlying backing. This is made possible by a significant collaboration with Succinct Labs, which just completed a $55 million investment round that Paradigm co-led.
Uma Roy, Founder and CEO of Succinct Labs stated:
“ZKPs are a powerful technology that will enable DeFi to be more expressive and secure. Unstable’s use of ZK oracles to power their lending protocol engine shows how ZK can enable a new category: zkDeFi.”