RedStone has solidified its reputation as a pivotal player in decentralized finance (DeFi) since the last funding round. This article reviews key milestones and strategic initiatives to date, as well as discusses next steps following the $15 million Series A raise.
RedStone Growth
In August 2022, RedStone raised $7M in a seed round led by Lemniscap. This funding was followed by a series of significant milestones that have propelled them to expand its ecosystem.
1. Support to new blockchains
In July of this year, it was possible to record the integration of 60+ chains supported by RedStone oracles. Highlights in this expansion include the success integrating Delta Prime and Subnet support into Avalanche; additionally, RedStone took the lead in providing data feeds for the Ton network earlier this year and stands as the first Oracle to offer data on L3, providing feeds for zkLink Nova.
It is important to note that RedStone has been partnering with highly anticipated and invested blockchains, namely Taiko, Berachain and Sei Network, demonstrating confidence in their work and the reputation of the oracle service.
2. Protocols integration
A few months after the seed round, there was an exponential growth in protocols integrated, so that between the years 2023 and 2024, 70+ new integrations were announced. Notable projects include Pendle, Venus and Ethena, which together represent over $4 billion in price feeds secured by RedStone.
3. LSTs and LRTs
In November 2023 the RedStone team published a report analyzing in depth the growth of the Liquid Staking sector in DeFi. After conducting the research, the team did not miss the opportunity to gain space in this scenario, establishing partnerships with big names, like Swell and Lido.
A few months later, RedStone would be at the forefront of a new trend, LRTs and EigenLayer’s innovation.
Price feeds for Renzo’s $ezETH, KelpDAO’s $rsETH, and EtherFi’s $eETH were quickly announced as supported by RedStone, which has specialized in this type of asset, becoming a reference and now providing 30+ LST/LRT assets.
4. RedStone Expedition and Ambassador Program
The RedStone Miners Ambassador Program was created to encourage members engagement in various activities like content creation and social media promotion, in return they would be rewarded with exclusive roles and RedStone Gems (RSG). This model has given a unique face to the RedStone community, attracting many dedicated members to contribute to the project.
Later, the Redstone Expedition was announced, a 3-season odyssey whose adventures are based on exploring the ecosystem, learning about partner protocols and mining a lot of RSG, as well as including the ambassador program. The Expedition began shortly after the 10K discord members celebration. The channel currently has 160k+ miners, so it’s safe to say that the campaign was a complete success.
5. Team Expansion
One of the priorities established by the RedStone team after being funded was the growth of the team, which at the time consisted of 8 members. About 8 months later, they reached the milestone of 21 members keeping 85% dev to non-dev ratio, representing enormous potential to grow the project. The team currently consists of 15 members, including academics, programmers and business development.
6. Security
In addition to covering future protocols interested in joining LRTs, RedStone’s privileged position with respect to Restaking opens the door to new applications.
In an interview with 4RC in March this year, Marcin Kazmierczak, RedStone co-founder and COO, said the following:
“[…] from the three players we mentioned (Chainlink, Pith and RedStone), we are the only one really positioned to tap into the restaking shared security, and utilize all of that ETH, I think now it’s like 10 billion dollars, to protect our oracle and validate data feeds, and this is massive over long periods.”
RedStone has officially established the implementation of AVS using the Othentic architecture, working with EtherFi and EigenLayer to reduce data delivery costs, increase economic security, and utilize decentralized RPCs. The goal is to leverage Ethereum’s security to validate data feeds.
Funding Round And Angel Investors
In early July this year, RedStone announced its $15 million Series A funding round, led by Arrington Capital. In addition to the presence of large venture capitalists such as The Spartan Group, another point that draws attention is the participation of angel investors, who in turn are leaders and founders of important projects such as Berachain, EtherFi and Swell, which as we know, use RedStone’s service. Needless to say, in this sense, in addition to financial sponsorship, RedStone has gained even more reputation and trust in the DeFi ecosystem.
So, taking into account the recap we’ve talked about on Redstone’s growth so far, what can we expect in the coming months?
LST/LRT dominance
According to Mike Zajko, Co-founder at Lattice:
“The agility and strategic positioning of RedStone have made it a key player in enhancing the liquidity and accessibility of LSTs and LRTs.”
RedStone’s presence in the Liquid Staking and Liquid Restaking sectors is notable, but it is just the beginning. As interest in this type of asset grows, we can expect even more protocols to integrate them and offer new products related to it, like Pendle’s Yield Tokenization.
In this sense, RedStone is expected to continue to onboard and deliver these tokens, gaining more customers and increasing its Total Value Secured (TVS). This movement can be confirmed by RedStone’s latest integration of the bsdETH price feed into Morpho Blue about a week ago.
OEV and new trends
The Oracle Extractable Value (OEV) tecnology has been explored by RedStone since at least Q1 2024 and is part of the roadmap.
Using the concise summary carried out by Thanefield Research on the topic:
RedStone’s approach involves mitigating inefficiencies by designing aggregated order flow auctions, which allow DeFi applications to auction their order flow to MEV bots, thereby capturing and redistributing value back to users or adding it to the protocol’s treasury.
Estimates indicate a 50% increase in Aave’s revenue after 3 years of this type of implementation, indicating a significant reversal of this value into higher yields for lending. A beneficial system for protocols and users.
On June 26th, UMA Protocol announced that its OEV product now supports RedStone. In this way, UMA’s Oval can capture Oracle Extractable Value from liquidations on Morpho Blue, using RedStone’s $pufETH/$ETH feed.
Could this be yet another trend identified by RedStone before its exponential rise? Let’s follow the next chapters.
More Team members
As the project grows, it is expected that more people will be needed to meet new demands. The fastest growing Modular Oracle aims for engineering excellence and soft skills applicants. A few weeks ago, new team positions were announced in the areas of design, sales and marketing.
Recently, the podcaster Ari Kim was presented in an AMA with Curvance as being a new member of the Growth team in RedStone, lead by Jakub Jaworski, and more people are expected to expand the team soon.
Events and Campaigns
With the Series A fundraising, it will be possible to enable the RedStone team to participate in international events more frequently, which will enable a significant increase in its visibility and potential partnerships. It is already possible to see the team’s movement in this direction with the appearances of Marcin Kazmierczak and Mateusz Gurbiel at events such as consensus2024 and EthCC.
Additionally, RedStone’s participation in EthCC ushered in a new type of interaction with its community, by rewarding members with a special discord role if they met the team IRL.
And speaking of community, we can’t help but speculate about what’s next for RedStone Expedition. Season 2 was announced alongside the Series A fundraise, bringing with it a very important alpha.
“The Expedition will guide our partners towards the launch of the most anticipated Oracle coin in the coming months. The RedStone token.”
Does this mean that RSG miners will be rewarded with these beautiful tokens at the end of the expedition?
Absolutely impossible to confirm this, as there is no official information about it. But… who knows? Maybe it’s worth grabbing your pickaxe and mining some gems.
Conclusion
RedStone Oracles has grown significantly since its seed round in August 2022, integrating over 60 blockchains and leading in the LST/LRT sector. With the recent $15 million Series A funding, RedStone is set to explore new trends like Oracle Extractable Value (OEV) and expand its visibility. This positions RedStone for further growth and solidifies its role in the DeFi space.
Important Links
Website: https://redstone.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/redstone_defi
Discord: redstone.finance/discord
Zealy: https://zealy.io/c/redstoneoracles/questboard
