Pantera, Coinbase Join $4.5 Million Round for Staking-as-a-Service Startup

Blockchain investment firm Pantera Capital is leading a $4.5 million seed round in Staked, a startup that provides institutional investors with the technical infrastructure for non-custodial staking services.

"You've got $25 billion of stake-able crypto that's coming online in the next 15 months," Staked CEO and co-founder Tim Ogilvie told CoinDesk, describing what he sees as a large opportunity.

"Pantera invests in many leading proof-of-stake projects, so we knew we needed a staking solution," Pantera partner Paul Veradittakit said in a press release.

Pantera first approached Staked as a customer before deciding to invest.

"Our cap table is all people who have stake or can influence stake," Ogilvie said of his investors.

Ogilvie started Staked last March alongside Seth Riney and Jonathan Marcus, working with Multicoin Capital as an early client.

The startup supports Tezos, Dash, Decred, Livepeer, Factom and EOS. The latter two, it should be noted, don't provide a return for staking; nevertheless, investors want to be able to participate in these networks fully.

Anyone who digs into staking knows that there's a lot of variation between protocols.

On the other hand, Decred uses a more intermittent staking approach where users buy tickets on an open market that pay out less predictably.

Staked's basic business model gives it a maximum of 10 percent of the earnings of its customers' staked tokens.