Diva, a decentralized Ethereum staking protocol, raised USD 3.5 million in seed funding led by A&T Capital, with participation from Gnosis, Bankless, OKX Ventures, Metaweb, DCV Capital, and Alphemy Capital, among several other investors. 

The company plans to use the funding to build out its platform which is set to be launched publicly in late January 2023.

Analyst QuickTake: In spite of market turmoil, cryptocurrency staking has seen growing investor interest in the last few months with a number of startups raising funding. These include Kiln , which raised USD 17.6 million , Moonstake , which received an undisclosed amount as a grant, and Texture , which raised USD 5 million . The growing interest follows an update to Ethereum , which saw the blockchain making the switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism (dubbed “the merge”) in September. Staking directly with Ethereum requires at least 32 Ether (ETH) to set up a validator node, Diva aims to decentralize this process and reduce cost by enabling users to pool funds together to stake their ETH.