Blockchain oracle RedStone raises $15 million Series A via token round

RedStone, a modular blockchain oracle provider, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Arrington Capital.

Other investors in the round included Kraken Ventures, White Star Capital, Spartan Group, Amber Group, SevenX Ventures and IOSG Ventures, RedStone said Tuesday. Angel investors, including Smokey the Bera and Homme Bera of Berachain, Mike Silagadze, Jozef Vogel and Rok Kopp of Ether.Fi, and Amir Forouzani, Jason Vranek and Christina Chen of Puffer Finance, also joined the round.

RedStone began raising funds for the Series A round in April after receiving inbound interest from investors and closed the round in June, founder and CEO Jakub Wojciechowski told The Block. The round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT), Wojciechowski said, adding that "RedStone has no equity component at all." He declined to comment on the valuation.

The Series A round brings RedStone's total funding to around $23 million. The project has previously raised three rounds: a $7 million seed in August 2022, a $350,000 angel investor round in April 2023, and a $525,000 pre-seed round in July 2021, Wojciechowski said.

What is RedStone?

RedStone is a blockchain oracle similar to popular oracles like Chainlink and Pyth Network , but it differentiates itself with a modular design. "Due to our modular architecture, our launch on new networks is significantly quicker and we can adjust our flow depending on the market needs, i.e., with the liquid restaking tokens wave, we were the first oracle to support projects like Ether.Fi, Renzo, Puffer and Swell,” Wojciechowski said.

A blockchain oracle supplies real-world data to smart contracts for execution based on current information. Meanwhile, a modular oracle offers flexibility with components that can be updated or replaced independently, ensuring easy scalability and integration across different blockchains.

Wojciechowski cited RedStone's integration with The Open Network (TON) blockchain as an example of its modular design advantage. He said RedStone was the first and currently only oracle on the TON blockchain. "TON's architecture makes the effort for an Oracle to integrate a heavy lift," Wojciechowski said. "Our team spent four months ensuring the end-to-end integration worked well."

RedStone is currently the fifth-largest blockchain oracle, with its total value secured at around $3.5 billion,Wojciechowski said, citing DeFiLlama data .

Founded in 2020 during the Arweave chain's incubation program, RedStone is chain-agnostic and currently supports over 60 blockchains, including Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks such as Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum and Merlin Chain. The oracle also plans to support Berachain and Monad blockchains and is set to launch as an actively validated service (AVS) on EigenLayer. EigenLayer AVSs are third-party protocols that derive security from EigenLayer, an Ethereum restaking protocol.

RedStone token launch

RedStone's Series A funding round comes ahead of its token launch later this year. The project plans to use RED as its token ticker, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens, RedStone's co-founder and chief operating officer Marcin Kazmierczak revealed for the first time to The Block.

RedStone is presently running season 2 of its points program called RedStone Gems (RSG). When asked if RSG points will be converted into RED tokens, Kazmierczak said he couldn't confirm it yet.

Switzerland-based RedStone employs 18 people, and the project is looking to hire more with its new funding. Kazmierczak said RedStone plans to grow its headcount to 30 by hiring global go-to-market team members and engineers in Central-Eastern Europe.