Funding Wrap: Startup co-founded by former FTX employees land $17M

A startup co-founded by the former FTX general counsel and former head of strategy at FTX.US has raised $17 million in a Series A led by Placeholder VC, with a valuation of $120 million.

The startup, Backpack, is an exchange and wallet, also home to the popular Solana NFT project MadLads.

Having previously been backed by FTX Ventures, Backpack was hit badly financially following the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange.

Loading Tweet..

The company has turned things around since, with MadLads NFTs’ floor price currently sitting at over $23,000, according to CoinGecko.

Backpack is not the only company led by former FTX employees that has raised funding as of late, with former FTX.US president Brett Harrison recently securing $12 million for his new derivatives exchange.

Restaking is still top-of-mind

Restaking protocol ether.fi has received $23 million in a Series A led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund. This will be in addition to the $4 million in SAFE funding it secured late last year.

This raise follows EigenLayer’s $100 million haul from Andreessen Horowitz, showing that restaking is top of mind for many investors today.

In addition to ether.fi and EigenLayer, a project called BounceBit, which focuses on bitcoin restaking, has also secured $6 million in funding.

Other notable fundraises

Longtime bitcoiner Dan Held raised a $21 million fund for bitcoin.
Avail raised $27 million to address interoperability in a seed funding round led by Founders Fund and Dragonfly.
Karma3 Labs secured $4.5 million to build a reputation protocol in a round led by Galaxy Digital and IDEO CoLab Ventures.
Payments infrastructure startup Sphere landed $2.8 million in a seed round led by TCG Crypto and Jump Crypto.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
Empire: Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross.
Forward Guidance: Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin.
0xResearch: Get alpha directly in your inbox — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.
Lightspeed: All things Solana, in your inbox, every day from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
The Drop: The newsletter for crypto collectors and traders, covering games, tokens, apps, memes and more.