Crypto Fundraising is Up Only.

Deal volume increased 3.8% to $1.36 billion in April 2024, continuing an eight-month uptrend since lows of $372 million in August 2023.

Networks dominated, with three of the top five deals being Layer-1s 🧵

Crypto Fundraising (April 2024)

Total amount ⬆️ 3.8% to $1.36B
Deal count ⬇️ 16.7% to 259

Despite a drop in deals, fundraising still increased, marking large deals across the month.

Networks stole the show, accounting for 37.7% of fundraising volume.

Research /messari • Crypto explainooor 🧵 • Chicagoan nomading Latam 🌎

Early-Stage Deals (April 2024)

Volume ⬇️ 18.2% to $578M
Count ⬆️ 6.1% to 105

Pre-seed through Series A deals accounted for 42.4% of fundraising volume.

Movement Labs raised $38 million in a Series A led by Polychain Capital

Movement aims to enable modular Ethereum L2s that are parallelized and compatible with both the EVM and MoveVM. 

The Move Stack hopes to support an Optimism Superchain-esque ecosystem of parallelized L2s.

Agora raised $12 million when selling equity in a seed round led by Dragonfly.

Agora plans to launch AUSD, a stablecoin that will follow the collateral model used by USDT and USDC. Notably, Agora has ties to VanEck, who plans to manage collateral reserves.

Thruster raised $7.5 million at a $70 million valuation in a seed round led by Pantera Capital.

Thanks to Pacman's incentivization schemes for Blast and Thruster's Credit system, Thruster has thrusted to become Blast's top DEX and benefited from the explosive growth.

Networks Sector (April 2024)

Volume ⬆️ 57.6% to $515M
Count ⬇️ 35.1% to 24

Seven of April's top ten deals were networks, highlighted by Monad
 and L1s like IoTeX and Burnt (XION)

L2s were also prevalent with Movement and multiple Bitcoin L2s.

Monad raised $225 million in a monster funding round led by Paradigm.

Monad is an upcoming L1 that features optimistic parallel execution while maintaining EVM compatibility. 

As evidenced by the number below, this is one of the most hyped launches of 2024!

$50 million was invested to support the IoTeX ecosystem, which could re-energize the network and provide a spark in activity and interest.

Investments were made in “long-term staked” IOTX, DePIN projects building on IoTeX, and funding for the DepinSurf Accelerator Fund.

Burnt (XION) raised $25 million in a Series A with participation from over 20 investors.

Burnt is a core contributor to XION, an upcoming L1 that aims to abstract away technical aspects of blockchains and crypto (keys, gas, signatures, etc.) to build a consumer-first network.

Bitcoin is experiencing a renaissance. BRC-20s, Ordinals, Runes, and now Bitcoin L2s. Multiple were funded:

• Mezo raised $25M (Series A)
• Alpen Labs raised $10.6M (Series A)
• Merlin Chain raised an undisclosed amount
• Zulu Network raised $3 million (Pre-seed)

Infrastructure Sector (April 2024)

Volume ⬇️ 9.4% to $172M
Count ⬇️ 2.2% to 44

Deals across the Infrastructure Sector were noticeably more distributed across various categories when compared to the prior year.

Aligned Layer raised $22.6 million in a seed round + Series A led by 
Lemniscap and Hack VC, respectively.

Aligned Layer is a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) verification protocol secured by EigenLayer restaking.

Turnkey raised $15 million in a Series A led by Galaxy and Faction.

Turnkey is a wallet infrastructure provider that aims to enable a more user-friendly onchain experience through its wallets-as-a-service offering.

Financial Sector (April 2024)

Volume ⬆️ 6.2% to $260M
Count ⬇️ 34.5% to 36

The sector was highlighted by investments made in CEXs (Midas and Ubit) and DEXs (Phoenix)

The RWA category saw a significant increase in funding led by the Centrifuge Series A.

Ellipsis Labs raised $20 million in a seed round led by Paradigm.

Ellipsis is the core developer behind Phoenix, an onchain limit order book on Solana. In contrast to AMMs, LOBs operate in a direct P2P manner, allow for limit orders, and LPs don't face impermanent loss.

Messari's April 2024 Fundraising Report just went live for Enterprise subscribers.

Inside you can find a bull and bear case for each of the funded projects I covered this month.

Let me know what you think!

Messari's April 2024 Fundraising Report just went live for Enterprise subscribers.

Inside you can find a bull and bear case for each of the funded projects I covered this month.

Let me know what you think!

https://messari.io/report/april-2024-fundraising-report