Bitcoin “liquid staking” platform Stroom Network gets $3.5 million to go live on Lightning

Greenfield, a Berlin-based crypto investment business, led a $3.5 million seed funding round for Stroom Network, which was oversubscribed.

An oversubscribed early fundraising round brought in $3.5 million for Stroom Network, the creators of a “liquid staking” protocol for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

According to a release, Greenfield, a Berlin-based crypto investment firm, led the round, which also included contributions from Lemniscap, No Limit Holdings, Cogitent Ventures, and Mission Street, Ankr’s venture arm.

The funds will be used to hire more people, roll out Bitcoin “liquid staking” on Lightning, and distribute an Ethereum-based wrapped token called lnBTC.

Stroom’s protocol facilitates the use of bitcoin funds on the Lightning Network and the Ethereum blockchain. Users can earn Bitcoin through routing fees by depositing Bitcoin on Lightning. At the same time, similar to WBTC, Stroom produces a wrapped Bitcoin token, lnBTC, on Ethereum at a 1:1 ratio with Bitcoin. This allows users to investigate other return potential across the Ethereum ecosystem.

Rostyslav Shvets, CEO of Stroom and a former employee of blockchain service provider Bitfury and liquid staking platform Lido, believes that the Lightning Network has significant unrealized potential in light of Binance’s recent implementation of the network.

Stroom’s chief technology officer, Slava Zhygulin, elaborated, “Our goal is to provide anyone with an easy way to earn Lightning routing fees and contribute to Bitcoin’s scalability.”

Since 2016, when he collaborated with Lightning Labs’ co-founder and CTO Olaoluwa Osuntokun and Stroom’s core developer Mykola Sahno on a white paper for a routing algorithm named Flare, Zhygulin has been hard at work on Lightning.

“To do this, we’ve introduced DeFi mechanisms and simplified the technical requirements for maintaining a Lightning node. We believe these mechanisms can convince Bitcoin users who are also familiar with Ethereum to move their liquidity to Lightning while keeping their profit in Ethereum, as stated by Zhygulin.”

Also Read: U.S. Copyright Office Issues Inquiry Notice Regarding AI