Valantis acquires StakedHYPE, a liquid staking platform on Hyperliquid

The Block

2025-08-19 22:00:02

Chia sẻ để

Valantis, a modular decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol, said it has acquired StakedHYPE, the second-largest liquid staking platform on Hyperliquid’s HyperEVM blockchain.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Valantis said StakedHYPE’s operations, development, and scaling efforts will now be managed by Valantis Labs. As part of the deal, Addison Spiegel, founder of Thunderhead (the entity behind StakedHYPE), is joining Valantis as an advisor.

StakedHYPE is the second-largest liquid staking platform after Kinetiq within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, with more than $200 million in total value locked (TVL), according to DeFiLlama. Valantis, initially launched to help developers build decentralized exchanges using composable modules, has since shifted to building products on its own stack, co-founder and CTO Ed Carvalho told The Block.

The firm recently launched an LST-specific DEX for StakedHYPE (stHYPE) and Kinetiq Staked HYPE (kHYPE), which it says are the two largest pools on HyperEVM, with nearly $70 million combined TVL and more than $500 million in cumulative trading volume. Carvalho said the StakedHYPE acquisition is designed for vertical integration, allowing Valantis to build further market infrastructure around LSTs.

"Valantis built initial traction as an LST-specific DEX, offering the best pricing/liquidity/returns for these kinds of assets," Carvalho said. "Full vertical integration of an LST protocol and a DEX protocol will lead to the deepest liquidity and most efficient market."

Carvalho added that StakedHYPE will expand beyond Hyperliquid staking emissions through HIP-3 (builder-deployed perpetuals front-end checks) and market maker fee discounts.

Valantis also plans to make the stHYPE token more permissionless, deepen integrations with its DEX and HyperCore (Hyperliquid’s perps exchange), and ultimately evolve stHYPE into a liquidity network for the broader Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Valantis is backed by investors including Kraken Ventures, Figment Capital, and Robot Ventures. Last year, the project announced raising $7.5 million at a $40 million valuation.

StakedHYPE’s team, Thunderhead, on the other hand, hasn’t raised external funds and has been profitable since inception, Spiegel told The Block. Thunderhead’s headcount is six, and the team will not be joining Valantis, he added.

The deal has fully closed, with concrete talks beginning only a few weeks ago after earlier informal discussions, Carvalho said. He declined to share the structure of the transaction — whether cash, tokens, or equity — and added that Valantis is unable to disclose the names of its banking or legal advisors due to contractual restrictions.

The Funding newsletter: Stay on top of the latest crypto VC funding and M&A deals, news, and trends with my free bi-monthly newsletter, The Funding. Sign up here!

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.