Kiln

Crypto token staking is a rapidly growing multi-billion market, set for further rapid expansion as more Proof of Stake (PoS) becomes the de facto standard model for consensus among crypto networks. This also opens more opportunities for capital vs machine deployment within crypto networks. However, running staking nodes is a difficult task, akin to the challenges and expenses of running a production data center coupled with the complexity of orchestrating bleeding edge software from multiple blockchains in an environment in which security is paramount. These challenges aren’t just faced by institutional capital, but also by retail or exchanges & custodians seeking to provide staking services to their customers.

That is why Kiln has built a full-stack “staking as a service” platform, allowing pools of capital to participate in PoS, through a platform that enables investors and builders to manage validators and read-write nodes on multi-cloud infrastructure in a simple, fast and secure way. Kiln allows customers to securely deploy, manage and monitor blockchain validators across several networks in a single space — while users continue to control their private keys. The company runs a SaaS model for its services, dashboard and APIs. Kiln has partnered with Ledger Live, Crypto.com and Coinbase to provide pooled staking services, allowing every ETH holder to access staking with any amount of ETH access to value creation in the digital assets ecosystem. Further, Coinbase Cloud has integrated Kiln’s On-Chain platform into its product offering allowing Coinbase Cloud to bring on-chain partial ETH staking capabilities to their clients, with limited engineering effort needed to integrate. Kiln runs validators on all major PoS blockchains, with over $3.6b of stake under management (up 4.4x y-o-y), running on a multi-cloud, multi-region infrastructure. Kiln also provides a validator-agnostic suite of products for fully automated deployment of validators, reporting and commission management, enabling custodians, wallets and exchanges to streamline staking operations across providers.

Our Thesis

As increasingly large pools of capital are deployed to crypto to meet PoS demand of chains, a company that facilitates and manages capital flows should be able to become a key fabric for the space.

We are excited to be investing in Kiln for the third time now, most recently joining its $17 million funding round.