Polychain and Binance Labs invest in Celestia liquid staking protocol MilkyWay

MilkyWay, the liquid staking hub for Celestia’s modular ecosystem, has received backing from top crypto and blockchain venture capital firms Polychain Capital and Binance Labs.

MilkyWay secures $5 million from investors

An announcement published on Tuesday revealed that Polychain and Binance Labs led MilkyWay’s $5 million seed round raise.

The investment round also attracted the participation of Web3 venture capital firm Hack VC, founder-first fund for early-stage projects Crypto.com Capital and Web3 venture fund & accelerator LongHash Ventures.

The round also attracted various angel investors, including Celestia co-founder and CEO Mustafa Al-Bassam, Initia co-founder Batuhan Dasgin and Manta’s Kenny Li.

MilkyWay will use the funds to expand its team, pay for operational expenses and crucially, boost modular ecosystem.

“Our goal is to grow the modular ecosystem by amplifying the applications of modular liquidity,” the protocol said in an announcement.

Binance Labs backs MilkyWay's modular liquid staking

In a blog post on April 30, Binance Labs said its investment in MilkyWay aims at supporting the protocol’s growth as a leading modular liquidity provider for rollups that tap into Celestia for Data Availability.

MilkyWay helps bolster this through the unlocking of liquidity for Celestia (TIA) tokens.

Binance co-founder and head of Binance Labs Yi He, commented:

Binance Labs’ investment in MilkyWay adds to the venture firms’ growing bet on projects in the staking and restaking markets. Recent projects to attract the company’s attention and funds include Renzo, Babylon, Puffer Finance and StakeStone.