Figment

Figment

Figment was founded in 2018 by Lorien Gabel, Andrew Cronk and Ben Chan in Toronto, Canada. The firm emerged to serve institutional investors entering the crypto space, building the underlying validation and infrastructure layer for proof-of-stake blockchains. Its founders brought backgrounds in technology and finance, positioning Figment between the protocol layer and traditional capital. The firm's core business is staking infrastructure — it validates transactions and earns staking rewards on behalf of clients who delegate their tokens. Figment operates across more than 60 blockchain networks including Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche and Polygon (per public record). Beyond staking, the firm offers middleware tools for decentralized application development, blockchain data APIs, and a governance portal that lets clients vote on protocol changes. Its revenue comes from staking commissions and infrastructure subscriptions, not from trading or custody. Figment raised $50M in a Series B round in February 2022 led by Cathay Innovation, with participation from GIC, and has disclosed a total funding of over $90M from investors including Tencent, Gaingels and BlockFi (per press releases, 2022). It maintains offices in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Belmont. The firm employs roughly 150-200 professionals across engineering, product, and client relations. Figment operates no separate philanthropic vehicle or adjacent family office structure — it is a pure infrastructure company. Figment's structural differentiator is its exclusive focus on non-custodial staking — it never holds client private keys, reducing counterparty risk for institutional allocators. This mandate has made it the staking provider of choice for crypto-native funds and traditional asset managers alike. Its governance offering further distinguishes it, enabling clients to exercise voting power without active participation.