Brevan Howard Backs Crypto Infrastructure Startup Puffer in $5.5 Million Round

Blockchain infrastructure company Puffer Finance has raised $5.5 million in a seed funding round led by Lemniscap and a joint venture between Lightspeed and Faction. Brevan Howard Digital was another investor as it is the digital asset arm of the global wealth management company with over $30 billion in assets under management.

The new funds will be used to accelerate Puffer’s Secure-Signer open-source product development and create a permissionless stake pool.

Buffer is designed to help solo validators in Eehreum’s Proof-of-Stake network to overcome the challenges they face. Secure-Signer, a remote signature software, limits access to the validation key to reduce the risk of punishment or truncation due to software bug or user error. Stakers who don’t own a lot of Ether can take a big hit. Puffer has also been working on a protocol designed to lower the barriers to entry for home stakers as an alternative to liquid stake services.

Bankless Ventures and Animoca Ventures were also part of the funding round, as were DACM, LBK SNZ, LBK and Canonical Crypto. Puffer previously received funding from the Ethereum Foundation via a $120,000 grant and a $650,000 seed round led by Jump Crypto.

Amir Forouzani, Jason Vranek and their team said they hoped the buffer protocol would create an area where decentralization could thrive. “By lowering the barriers to entry, anyone can run a buffer node from home to run the Web3 infrastructure and play a critical role in designing a Web3 that is resilient and censorship-resistant.”

Update (8 Aug 16:24:24 UTC). KuCoin Ventures has been removed.