News

Galaxy Digital, the publicly traded crypto firm led by Michael Novogratz, has acquired substantially all the assets of blockchain node operator CryptoManufaktur LLC, in a deal that will grow the company's Ethereum staking capabilities.

The agreement with CryptoManufaktur, known as CMF, was announced in a press release provided exclusively to CoinDesk. Terms weren't disclosed.

According to a spokesperson, Galaxy is acquiring the operations and engineering teams and the assets that come with those, increasing the company's serviced assets under stake by about 43%.

CMF founder Thorsten Behrens, as part of a three-person engineering team, will join Galaxy's blockchain infrastructure team, which provides staking and blockchain validator services to qualified investors, protocols and digital-asset platforms, according to the press release.

CMF, started in 2020, was originally launched to build infrastructure for the blockchain oracle project Chainlink, and later expanded into running automated proof-of-stake node deployment infrastructure on Ethereum. The deal comes with about $1 billion of Ethereum assets under stake, raising Galaxy's total to $3.3 billion.

Galaxy has been expanding into blockchain infrastructure, adding to its primary business lines of crypto trading and investment management. Novogratz is a closely followed figure in crypto and on business TV networks like CNBC, partly because of his deep background on Wall Street, he was as an executive at Goldman Sachs, and hedge fund Fortress Investment Group.

“Galaxy is rapidly expanding its blockchain infrastructure and staking capabilities and capacity to provide enterprise-grade technical expertise and support to strategic corners of the digital-asset ecosystem," Zane Glauber, head of Galaxy’s blockchain infrastructure team, said in the release. "Our acquisition of CMF is an important milestone that significantly enhances our position as a leading technical partner to protocols and builders.”