Venture capitalists are refocusing on crypto startups founded by professors, according to Bloomberg. Companies like Sahara, CheckSig, and NEBRA were all founded by academics and raised new funding in the past two months. However, in the category nicknamed "professor coins" by the industry, two startups stand out: EigenLayer and Babylon. EigenLayer was founded by Sreeram Kannan, a former associate professor at the University of Washington. Kannan spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, where he worked with Tse. His work on re-staking technology and his close relationship with Tse led Bloccelerate to invest first in EigenLayer and then in Babylon. The re-staking process is a variation on the way Ethereum operates, where tokens are "staked" to the network to help verify transactions on the blockchain. For new projects and blockchains running the same mechanism, building their own staking support can be too slow and expensive due to a lack of activity and capital. Re-staking allows newcomers to borrow the staking power of Ethereum to get ahead. Babylon takes a similar approach, but is more focused on Bitcoin. However, the road ahead is not always smooth for crypto projects led by professors, and most projects fail.
