Staking is essential for blockchain users. It’s how they can reinvest their assets while contributing to the network’s security. But do you know that there are different ways to stake your assets, and with the right protocol, you can even stake your Bitcoin?
Today, let’s explore our talk with Figment, a large-scale staking infrastructure provider with over $15 billion of staked assets. They’ll tell you more about that.
Part 1: What is Figment
Kate, GetBlock: How has Figment evolved since its inception, and what are some key milestones the company has achieved?
Drake, Figment: Nowadays, Figment is the leading provider of institutional staking services, operating for eight years. We provide staking on over 40 different networks, from Ethereum and Solana to many others.
As Figment is focused on institutions, we have over 700 institutional customers and $15 billion of assets under stake. We’re constantly working to add new protocols and expand our services.
Since inception, our core focus has been staking infrastructure. Several other business lines, such as blockchain data research, are also present, but staking is always primary. We’re inclined to grow in all fields where people hold digital assets, to help them stake these assets safely and earn rewards on it.
Kate: What differentiates Figment from other staking infrastructure providers?
Drake: Yes, there are other companies that provide staking and validator infrastructure for their customers. Our specific niche is the focus on institutional, large-scale digital asset holders, so our unique features follow from this differentiation.
Compliance is one of them. We seek to be the best source of risk-adjusted rewards for staking while doing it in a way compliant with all local regulation. Another focus is performance: whether Ethereum, Solana or any other asset, we have a dedicated team of DevOps engineers and managers who work to ensure the best possible rewards for each individual chain. All networks are different, and each requires specific optimization, so we provide it. As a result, our customers can be sure that they’ll have the best possible stacking rewards while keeping their funds safe.
Our network support, with over 40 chains, is another distinguishing factor. We don’t stop with that and will continue to add new networks as they become more popular. So, our customers can be sure they’ll find the infrastructure for every digital asset they hold. Also, we have integrations with institutional wallet services, such as Fireblocks, so it’s extremely easy for our customers to manage their funds. I’m pretty sure that Figment has one of the best UXs for that.
And finally, it’s the institutional connectivity. We have a network of large-scale institutional customers, and I believe our ecosystem can connect different people together, who can benefit each other.
Kate: Which networks are expected to be added next?
Drake: Yes, definitely! There are a number of new projects launching this year. I’ll highlight just a handful of them that are relevant for us in the next couple of quarters.
There are Babylon and Lombard protocols, which add staking features to Bitcoin. Babylon adds a layer of security to blockchains and applications when users stake Bitcoin and get rewards for that. It’s similar to Eigenlayer for Ethereum. After a recent launch, Babylon already has about 60,000 BTC staked, which is a fantastic result.
Lombard is another project built on top of Babylon. Think of it as a Lido for Bitcoin: you can receive staking rewards from Babylon while you have Lombard’s token that can be used for various other activities.
Another project in Monad, where we have early access and can watch how it’s developing. It’ll probably be released later this year, and it’s a highly optimized and fast EVM blockchain. We think it’ll be very interesting.
Canton is another chain, mostly designed for enterprise-grade clients. Its team works with the largest financial organizations globally, holding trillions of dollars in total, so it’ll be exciting for us to have validator infrastructure for this network.
This is only one of the exciting new projects we're planning to add. We'll announce more shortly, so stay connected!
Part 2: Challenges and opportunities
Kate: What are the biggest challenges in running validator nodes across multiple blockchains, and how does Figment address them?
Drake: It’s a very chain-specific matter.
I think such chain peculiarities are among the largest challenges for our DevOps and tech teams. You can read the docs, and count all node requirements, but each chain has its own network-specific quirks. As a validator, users expect high performance, and there are thousands of things that influence it. Optimizing is the hardest part.
There are various signing methods, customer geography, usage of your own equipment or cloud-hosting services, and many other different variables to consider. The chain infrastructure operates in real-time and customers expect it’ll be operating steadily. Therefore, our tech teams need to know all these network-specific quirks and use a specific, personalized approach for each network. There are also risks like slashing or downtime if any of these variables aren’t considered.
Kate: Education is a key part of Web3 adoption. How does Figment contribute to educating both developers and investors about staking?
Drake: We have good coverage on all staking-related topics specifically for institutional investors and corporate clients. Our team includes specialists on Ethereum, Solana, and other chains, focusing on research and publishing how different chain events affect staking rewards.
We also have webinars and Twitter space events, host conferences, and engage with large financial institutions—not limited by crypto. To those of them who aren’t connected to the crypto world yet, we explain how staking works, how they can benefit from it, and the risks associated with that.
For developers, we publish our research on the new chains we’re watching—and how we can interact with them.
Kate: What challenges do staking providers face in the current regulatory landscape, and how is Figment navigating them?
Drake: As I mentioned, we have a very strong focus on compliance, so that’s a very important topic for us. Regarding our previous question, we also educate our customers regarding regulatory peculiarities and what they should expect from them.
There are specific regional regulations in different countries regarding staking. Remarkably, in the United States headwinds are turning to tailwinds now. In a couple of months, we will witness a dramatic shift there.
In general, we have a Chief Regulatory Officer who is hyperfocused on stuff like laws, taxes, regulations, and legal situations in different countries. Of course, a primary thing is how all of them impact staking and how to educate our customers on this topic.
I think managing these regional differences and peculiarities is extremely important. We try to clarify what we can and can’t do in various parts of the world and how the situation changes.
Kate: How does Figment approach community engagement, and what role does governance play in your staking services?
Drake: Sure! Part of what makes the blockchain great is that the community greatly influences the project’s roadmap and development.
In an ideal world, at least, all major chains consider various proposals, then have a voting, and ecosystem members and validators can leave their commentaries on each stage. I think that such governance is super-important, especially in the early days of the chain, when it’s launched. It’s essential to keep the chain operating swiftly and efficiently.
With such governance, there are some regulatory concerns. With staking reward distribution, treasuries, and other activities, there are a lot of ways you can run into regulatory issues. If you're a large token holder in Cosmos, Solana, or other networks, you expect us to manage tokens following the local laws, so that’s our primary focus. There are some issues validators should have a say in and others we feel they shouldn’t.
We also have various updates, such as the recent Solana update, based on what our users want.
Part 3: The future
Kate: What’s next for Figment in 2025 and beyond? Are there any major roadmap updates or innovations you can share?
Drake: The biggest thing we have to say now is that staking has become weirder, and our development is connected to that.
In addition to developing the staking infrastructure, new protocols often implement specific ideas of how rewards are distributed. Many of them operate on top of existing networks, providing additional benefits.
One such approach is liquid staking, such as Lido, which provides users with liquid staking tokens (LST). With our institutional staking focus, we’re heavily involved in that. From liquid staking, it further evolves into re-staking, which includes things like Eigenlayer on Ethereum. These protocols are located on top of other chains, providing additional security and rewarding users for their participation.
It goes even further and introduces concepts like Bitcoin staking, with Babylon we’ve mentioned. It’s a new market for us, and we’re very excited about it. New projects introduce new ways to stake assets and create value from them, increasing capital efficiency.
The last thing we’re looking forward to is stablecoins. When the crypto market shrinks, the transaction volumes for stables dramatically increase. Working with them is different from our core activities, it’s more about investment than staking. Still, we see them as an opportunity for us and are very excited to introduce various features for our users to work with stablecoins.
