Weekly Recap

March continues to be an impressive month for the crypto private market. Total funding reached $228 million across 32 deals, marking the third consecutive week with over 30 deals. Average deal size has slowly been increasing. This week’s average deal amount was $10.9 million. For comparison, 2023’s average deal size was $9.2 million, representing an 18.4% increase. DeFi was the leading category from a deal count perspective, representing 34% of total deals but only 11% of total funding. In contrast, Infrastructure was the leader from a funding perspective, representing 55% of funding and only 19% of deals. Examining deal stages, Series A deals accounted for 50% of funding, totaling $115 million. There has been a recent uptick in Series A rounds. March has seen 13 Series A rounds while January and February both saw about half that amount.

Funding by Category

Funding by Deal Stage

Deal of the Week

Espresso Systems, a shared sequencing marketplace for rollups, raised $28 million via a Series B round led by a16z. Other investor participation included Polygon, Frax, Starkware, Rarible, Taiko, and Injective, among others. Espresso hopes to increase users' utility through improved safety, liveness, and interoperability while being fully compensated for created value. The fun...