Web3 infrastructure startup Aligned, based in Puerto Rico, has come out of stealth with $34 million in funding. The valuation was not disclosed. Sam Cassatt, the former Chief Strategy Officer of ConsenSys, founded the company.
Aligned raised the money from several institutional investors, including:
- GSR, a cryptocurrency market maker and ecosystem partner
- Altium Capital
- Cavalry Fund
- Ninja4
A group of private investors also took part. They include Happy Walters, a well-known executive, film producer and sports agent.
Other individual backers joined the round too:
- Steve Wiggins, a businessman and investor
- Chris Ensey, an executive at Gryphon Digital Mining
- Andrew Keys, a ConsenSys alumnus and founder of DARMA Capital
- Ron Patiro, who led PayPal’s Experimentation Program
The main goal of the round was to grow the firm’s presence in the high-performance computing (HPC) market.
Aligned’s products cover mining, staking and liquidity provision for Ethereum-compatible blockchains. Its technology also supports other popular blockchains and newer designs. The new funds will help the firm improve its core tools for mining, staking and more.
Optimal Solutions For DeFi Projects
More and more blockchains now use the proof-of-stake model. In this model, holders lock up tokens to help secure the network. As a result, demand for staking and validators keeps growing.
Aligned also provides on-chain liquidity, which means it supplies funds that DeFi apps need to work. The company says it has deployed 15,000 ETH (about $440.5 million) across the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem so far.
The firm says it works with partners such as Neptune DAO. Neptune DAO provides liquidity to new DeFi projects, and Aligned helps deploy it to those clients’ networks.
The platform gives DeFi apps all the basic parts they need:
- The liquidity, or money, in the protocol
- The software that sends transactions and runs the blockchain
- The hardware that runs the program
In Aligned’s case, the hardware is built just for this purpose. Together, these parts form what the company calls a “full-stack” network. It runs at every layer in one connected system.
Sam Cassatt is a well-known investor and an early Ethereum adopter. He built Aligned after serving as Chief Strategy Officer at ConsenSys.
Since 2020, the company has quietly built a strong team. Its members have years of experience in Web3 infrastructure, telecoms, HPC, data center management and asset management. The team also includes crypto-native DeFi builders and power users.
According to Cassatt, the company is now doing several things at once:
- Buying silicon chips
- Making and installing custom hardware based on those chips
- Growing its HPC staff
He said most of this hardware will sit in the company’s main data center. That center will soon expand to more locations.
A Future Built On Decentralized Technology
In recent weeks, crypto companies have become favorites of venture capital firms. Two recent deals show this:
| Company | Funding round | Valuation |
|---|---|---|
| Blockdaemon | $207 million | $3.25 billion |
| Alchemy | $200 million | $10 billion |
Aligned offers a wide set of products. These include mining and high-speed computing, staking and liquidity provision. At the same time, it supports decentralization by building an immutable, full-stack network for DeFi.
A future built on decentralized tools, such as zero-knowledge proofs, would remove the need for central networks with a single point of failure. Zero-knowledge proofs let one party prove something is true without revealing the underlying data.
Cassatt said that, in his view, Aligned is Web3’s answer to Amazon Web Services (AWS). He said the firm is building custom hardware, tools and design at every layer of the stack. This lets it support decentralized networks and the cryptocurrencies needed to run them.
All of this creates real upside for clients. Cassatt said he is thrilled to have investors who share the team’s vision. He believes they see the chance to build a better business model for running Web3 projects.
He added that the raise is just the start of a big year for Aligned and its partners. The team aims to streamline every layer of the blockchain, from network design to DeFi apps.
Leading The Race For Web3’s Infrastructure
Aligned has a strong record of designing and deploying advanced blockchain solutions. This comes from its broad know-how in Web3 technology and financial services.
The company has built its own up-to-date hardware and software. These tools use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), which are flexible chips that can be reprogrammed. They are meant to power the next generation of on-chain computing.
This setup lets Aligned mine tokens like ETH. It also offers hardware speed-ups and cloud services to other Web3 protocols.
Aligned is working with other industry pioneers on a high-end computing network. The network is built for the needs of the growing decentralized ecosystem. It will be faster and more efficient. Staking, which was expected to become a $40 billion sector by 2025, is seen as the next generation of mining.
Proof-of-stake blockchains keep growing quickly, and demand for staking and validators is rising fast. Aligned’s core design is built to stake at large scale. This helps organizations get better returns by earning cash flow from staking.
The platform also helps launch new DeFi protocols, which need liquidity to work. This process is similar to market making. It can be done through smart contracts instead of centralized exchanges.
Aligned is focused on providing on-chain liquidity. It works with many projects to place the funds that promising new apps need to launch. Three things help it move fast and scale in DeFi:
- Its early start in the market
- Fresh capital from the new funding round
- Its world-class team
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