MilkyWay, a liquid staking protocol operating in the Celestia ecosystem, has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, according to a statement made by MilkyWay co-founder and CEO JayB Kim.
Celestia's MilkyWay Raises $5 Million Ahead of Token Launch and Airdrop
Important investors such as Hack VC, Crypto.com Capital and LongHash Ventures participated in the financing round, which was completed about a month ago.
Binance Labs expressed its commitment to support MilkyWay as it becomes the leading liquid staking protocol in Celestia's modular blockchain ecosystem.
Launched last December, MilkyWay stands as the primary liquid staking protocol on the Celestia network, competing with its only rival, Stride.
Kim highlighted the architectural differences between MilkyWay and Stride, highlighting MilkyWay's simplicity in design and compatibility with Celestia's modular ecosystem.
While Stride supports multiple tokens for liquid staking, including TIA, ATOM, DYDX, INJ, and JUNO, MilkyWay focuses solely on the Celestia token (TIA) for liquid staking.
In preparation for the token launch and Airdrop, MilkyWay is currently running a points program called mPoints.
The upcoming token MILK is expected to be launched at the end of the second quarter or the beginning of the third quarter, with at least 10% of the total supply allocated to mPoint holders.
Going forward, MilkyWay plans to expand beyond the Celestia ecosystem, specifically targeting the Initia ecosystem, which will launch its mainnet in the second quarter.
MilkyWay aims to offer a rollup within the Initia ecosystem that includes a full-featured Cosmos SDK blockchain deployed via optimistic rollup technology.
With the new funding secured, MilkyWay anticipates further expansion and development with plans to hire additional team members to support its growth trajectory.
*This is not investment advice.