Berachain liquid staking protocol Infrared raises funds from Binance Labs in token round

Infrared Finance, a Berachain liquid staking protocol, has raised an undisclosed sum from Binance Labs, the $10 billion venture capital and incubation arm of the crypto exchange Binance.

Binance Labs invested in Infrared earlier this month in a strategic funding round as the sole investor, Raito Bear, pseudonymous co-founder and CEO of Infrared, told The Block. Infrared is Binance Labs' first investment in the Berachain ecosystem, a spokesperson of the venture firm told The Block.

The strategic funding round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens or SAFT, Bear said. Earlier this year, Infrared raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round from NGC Ventures, Tribe Capital, Shima Capital, Signum Capital and others. The seed round was also structured as a SAFT, Bear said. He declined to comment on the total funding raised to date and valuation.

What is Infrared?

Infrared was founded last year as one of the early projects in the Berachain Foundation's "Build-A-Bera" program. Berachain is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that has yet to launch the mainnet. Berachain has raised $112 million in total funding and is backed by high-profile investors, including Brevan Howard, Polychain Capital and Framework Ventures, according to The Block Pro's Funding Data Dashboard.

Infrared is a Berachain liquid staking protocol that is creating two liquid staking tokens — iBGT and iBERA — for Berachain's two key tokens: BGT (the governance token) and BERA (the gas token), respectively.

Berachain's BGT is a non-transferable and non-liquid token, similar to a soulbound token, Bear said. Thus, Infrared is developing iBGT to be utilized in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications available on Berachain, he added. As for BERA, Berachain validators must stake the token to produce blocks and earn rewards in BGT. With Infrared, validators can stake BERA to receive validator rewards while maintaining liquidity and avoiding the need to manage their own validator infrastructure, Bear said.

Infrared currently doesn't have any direct rivals but welcomes competition as it "promotes a healthy market environment and drives innovation," according to Bear.

Infrared launch schedule

Infrared is currently under development and will go live on the Berachain V2 testnet "very soon," Bear said. "This will allow us to gather user feedback and refine the protocol before the mainnet launch," he added.

In the future, Bear said that Infrared will also launch its own token, IRED.

With fresh funding in place, Infrared is looking to continue building its protocol, expanding its team and conducting audits of the protocol. Eight people are currently working for Infrared, Bear said, adding that he is hiring a senior back-end blockchain engineer, a senior front-end engineer and a developer relations lead.

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