Binance Labs invests in liquid staking platform aPriori

Binance’s venture capital arm has invested in aPriori, a liquid staking protocol on the Monad network focused on Miner Extractable Value (MEV), according to a July 30 announcement. 

The deal comes amid a flurry of investment in layer-1 network Monad and its surrounding decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

According to the statement, aPriori seeks to create sustainable incentives for validators on Monad by developing novel mechanisms for liquid staking tokens (LST) and MEV. Monad is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible L11 designed for complex, high-throughput applications.

"We at aPriori are developing an MEV-powered liquid staking platform on Monad," according to a statement from aPriori’s CEO, Ray, who did not share his surname. He added that aPriori seeks to “introduce novel products uniquely designed for high-throughput, parallel EVM networks.”

aPriori closed an $8 million seed round on July 23 led by Pantera Capital, alongside some two dozen other investors, according to Crunchbase. The round reportedly valued the blockchain startup at upward of $100 million. Another liquid staking protocol on Monad, Kintsu, closed a $4 million seed round in July.

Monad Labs closed on $225 million in an April funding that included Paradigm, Electric Capital and Coinbase Ventures and reportedly valued the blockchain’s developer at $3 billion.

Layer-1 blockchain networks raised almost $400 million from venture capital firms in the second quarter of 2024 and comprised about 12% of overall Web3 venture investment, according to Galaxy Research. Around 80% of venture funding went to early-stage startups.

“Notably, the market share of capital invested in the Layer 1 category is up over 6x due to the Monad and Berachain deal, which raised $225m and $100m, respectively,” according to the report.

aPriori was incubated through Season 6 of the Binance Labs Incubation Program. The crypto incubator has launched some 65 projects in total.