Overview

Obol network is an ecosystem for trust minimized staking that enables creation, test, run and co-ordinate distributed validators. Obol network is open source and permissionless. It is committed to using technology and cryptography to reduce the need to trust any single staking operator.

The Obol Network is responsible for promoting the adoption of multi-operator validation as a use case for Distributed Validator Technology.

DVT is a technology that allows an Ethereum PoS validator to be run on more than one node or machine allowing a cluster of nodes run by an individual, group or community of operators to act together as a single validator on Ethereum.

DVT improves the resilience of the system as single node validators create single points of failure in Ethereum’s consensus mechanism. If the node goes down, the validator goes down. In contrast, DVT allows validators to be run as cluster of nodes such that even if some of the nodes in a DV go offline, it would not effect the overall performance as long as enough nodes are live to meet the signing threshold.
Distributed Validators Clusters share on private key and no single node in the cluster has full private keys. This makes validator key compromise more difficult for an attacker.

DVT acts as a decentralizing force on the entire Ethereum network while adding resiliency and reducing risk. It is a technological primitive that will benefit everyone on the Ethereum network.
Obol Network’s Distributed Validator client is called Charon and it is the first step in enabling trust-minimized validation.

About the deal

Obol Technologies has raised $12.5 million in a Series A funding round. The round was lead by Pantera Capital and Archetype and saw the participation of Coinbase Ventures, Nascent, BlockTower, Placeholder, Ethereal Ventures, Spartan and IEX. Obol is planning to use this funding into the expansion of core team and advance the development of DVT(Distributed Validator Technology).

DVT is a technology that allows an Ethereum Proof-of-Stake validator to be run simultaneously on more than one machine. The breakthrough is the ability to split up a single validator private key, which makes it possible for a group of people to share validation rights of an Ethereum validator.

About the Investors

Pantera Capital is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. The firm prefers to invest in seed-stage, early-stage, and later-stage companies operating in B2B, B2C, media, blockchain, software as a service, mobile, cyber security, infrastructure, financial technology, the internet of things, big data, and technology sectors.

Coinbase Ventures is a corporate venture capital of Coinbase based in San Francisco, California. The firm seeks to invest in early-stage companies operating in the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology sectors. Coinbase has also Invested in Fleek and Momentum Safe.

Ethereal Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Road Town, British Virgin Islands. It has also invested in Astaria which is a startup of NFT and DeFi, and Spruce which is a developer of Digital Identity Software.

Table of Contents

• Deal Summary
• Company Details
• Company Management
• About the Company
• About the Deal
• About the Investors

At Peak Blockchain, we’re always on the lookout for the latest developments in blockchain technology. We’ve also added our New Coin Analysis, launched recently to our Blockchain Knowledge Base, so you can stay up-to-date on everything happening in the space.