Helio Protocol, a BNB Chain-based liquid staking protocol, received a USD 10 million investment from Binance Labs, Binance's venture arm. 

The company plans to use the funding to support its ongoing pivot to liquid staking, as well as its expansion to other blockchains (starting with Ethereum and eventually to layer-2 networks like Arbitrum and Zksync).

Previously, Helio operated as a stablecoin protocol, enabling users to mint HAY, its native dollar-pegged decentralized stablecoin. In July, the protocol merged Synclub, a staking platform, and announced diversifying the over-collateralized amount of BNB it was using to back HAY. 

Analyst Quicktake: Liquid staking on Ethereum has seen a growing investor interest in the last three months with a number of startups raising funding. These include Alluvial , Asymmetry Finance , and Maverick Protocol , which raised USD 12 million , USD 3 million , and USD 9 million , respectively. This trend follows Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, which enabled users to withdraw staked assets from the network in April. The update led to increased demand for staking Ethereum, which now has over 23% of its total supply locked up in staking contracts.