John Dantoni

What was once a niche ecosystem, the blockchain/crypto sector has evolved into an industry with some of the largest financial institutions entering the scene. The current market capitalization of the digital assets market sits at $2.5 trillion. On the venture side, nearly $17.8 billion in venture capital has poured into crypto firms from year to […]

The Block Research analyzed a total of 423 blockchain-related investment deals that occurred during Q3′ 21 to identify which crypto funds were the most active. Using Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and our sourcing/filtering, we mapped out the top 10 most active funds to determine specific verticals or themes that funds allocate more into than others. The top […]

For a third consecutive quarter, the blockchain/crypto sector saw historic levels of capital allocation by private investors. During Q3, the industry received nearly $8 billion in private investment across 423 total deals or a 21% increase in venture funding Q/Q. In total, venture capital firms have injected roughly $17.8 billion into crypto firms from the […]

Arweave is a decentralized data storage platform founded in 2017 by Sam Williams and William Jones. Arweave provides a pay-once pricing model that makes it possible to store data permanently and intends to be more profitable than centralized storage in the long term as the cost of data storage devices falls over time.  A critical use case for […]

Despite potential regulatory concerns surrounding the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) vertical and subsequent stablecoins that power much of its ecosystem, DeFi has been the most popular deal type amongst investors for the majority of 2021. The DeFi vertical has received nearly $1.3 billion investment across 275 funding rounds, with Ethereum-based applications receiving a significant percentage of […]

The crypto/blockchain sector received nearly $2.1 billion in private investment across 124 funding rounds in August. However, compared to July, total dollar volume declined approximately 24%, and the number of deals decreased about 21%. Despite the declining investment in August, Q3 is still on pace to mimic the dollar volumes that occurred in Q2.   […]

Interest surrounding decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) in the crypto sector has been picking up by community members and investors looking to allocate to new sectors. Advocates of DAOs believe that these community-owned cooperatives can provide a new social layer of coordination on the internet without the need for centralized leadership.  Some potential use cases for […]

OKEx Block Dream Ventures is the investment arm of the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange OKEx. The firm established its venture arm in late February 2021 with an initial fund size of $100 million. Additionally, in the second quarter of 2021, the firm launched a $20 million Solana fund and a $10 million Filecoin fund for […]

The growth in usage of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the enormous price appreciation of certain collectibles have attracted an influx of private investors, analogous to what occurred over DeFi Summer. Led predominately by OpenSea, marketplaces that enable the buying and selling of NFTs are on pace to do over $1 billion in trading volume in […]

Headquartered in Hong Kong, Animoca Brands develops and publishes mobile games in addition to other products based on its portfolio of intellectual property. Dating back to 2018, the firm has been one of the most active M&A participants and investors within the blockchain NFTs/Gaming vertical. Coming off of its recent fundraising rounds conducted over the […]

Over the past two quarters, the success of non-fungible tokens has brought a resurgence of interest towards the blockchain gaming sector. During the first half of the year, the NFTs/Gaming vertical has received nearly $1.2 billion in private investment. Two blockchain gaming companies, including Animoca Brands and Forte, raised at $1 billion valuations during Q2. […]

The Block Research analyzed a total of 497 blockchain-related investment deals that occurred during Q2′ 21 to identify which crypto funds have been the most active to the start of the year. Using Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and our own sourcing/filtering, we mapped out the top 10 most active funds to determine specific verticals or themes that […]

The Block Research observed a total of 497 blockchain-related venture deals that occurred during Q2′ 21 to analyze the private investment landscape and to identify trends that have taken place or are in the process of taking fold.  The deals used in this report were sourced through Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and The Block Research’s own research […]

IOSG Ventures is an investment and research firm focused on the blockchain/crypto sector with offices in Singapore and Shenzhen, China. The firm was founded in 2017 by Jocy Lin, and later in 2020, the former co-founder of the blockchain protocol Zilliqa joined IOSG Ventures as a partner.  During the firm’s early days, IOSG was predominately […]

Tezos is an open-source smart contract platform for assets and decentralized applications. The origins of Tezos dates back to 2014 when the founders of Tezos, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, published two papers, a position paper and a white paper under the pseudonym LM Goodman. The papers outlined the motivations for their new blockchain network, the […]

Wintermute Trading is a London-based market maker and proprietary trading firm within the digital asset sector. The firm was founded in 2017 by Evgeny Gaevoy, Harro Mantel, and Yoann Turpin, who had previously served as executives for the traditional market-making and proprietary trading firm Optiver.  Today, the firm provides liquidity to notable crypto exchanges like […]

Polygon (formerly Matic) was founded in 2017 by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Anurag Arjun, and Mihailo Bjelic to provide a scaling solution and framework for Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. With the rise in popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the Ethereum network has become increasingly congested, with hight cost transactions and limited […]

Based in Hong Kong, Genesis Block was founded in 2017 by Wincent Hung and Clement Lp. Coming from mining and trading backgrounds, Hung and Lp wanted to create a community center and an OTC channel to improve the OTC flow in the digital assets market. Aside from operating a proprietary trading desk and offering market […]

Celo is a blockchain project that uses a mobile-first approach to empower individuals worldwide through access to financial services and the ability to send money to anyone with their mobile phones. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, cLabs, the central team behind the development of Celo’s platform was founded in 2018 by Marek Olszewski, Rene Reinsberg, […]

Paradigm is a crypto-focused fund founded in 2018 by Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang. Before creating Paradigm, Ehrsam co-founded the crypto exchange Coinbase, and Matt Huang was a partner at Sequoia. Since its inception, the fund has attracted investments from funds such as Sequoia and high-profile university endowments like Harvard, Stanford, and Yale and is […]