Crypto Research

Funding dropped this week from $312M to just $99M. As we've seen all month, funding remains primarily concentrated in Infrastructure and Web3, which raised $37M and $28M, respectively. Infrastructure accounted for 9 of this week's 21 deals, and Web3 & NFTs accounted for 6. DeFi remains a laggard this week, receiving just $6M of funding One major crypto fund was raised this week –Cathie Wood's ARK's Crypto Revolutions Fund, which...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Last summer we published our deep research report on the Cardano Network, an open-source blockchain network leveraging a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism to provide a sustainable infrastructure for the development and secure execution of smart contracts. In our update report we discuss the latest technical and ecosystem developments along with refreshed quantitative analysis. KEY SLIDES FROM THIS REPORT... PLUTUS V1: SMART CONTRACTS AND CARDANO REFACTORING (SLIDE 4) VASIL...

MOST SIGNIFICANT BANKING FAILURE SINCE THE GFC Our clients know the rationale behind our bullish perspective on crypto this year. Consumer prices are broadly trending lower, peak-tightening occurred last year (on a rate-of-change basis), and global liquidity conditions have been more favorable than many anticipated. We also felt comfortable that most of the “forced selling” from market participants exiting the ecosystem was behind us.  Unfortunately, over the past few weeks,...

Funding rebounded this week despite drawdowns across crypto and traditional markets. Total weekly funding rose from $103M to $312M, with all sectors seeing increased funding except for DeFi and Mining. Infrastructure and Web3 & NFTs were the top funded verticals, raising $152M and $73M, respectively, while Mining has gone two straight weeks without funding. CeFi deals totaled $20m, showing signs of life after no CeFi deals closed last week.  Infrastructure...

Sean Farrell shares his updated outlook on the current crypto market, including global liquidity conditions and the appetite for risk assets. "We maintain the asymmetry from here remains to the upside in 1H and that this dip is worth buying. The lack of retreat in crypto prices relative to the increase in yields over the past few weeks is quite impressive. We think this is a function of investor composition,...

WHAT IS ZERO-KNOWLEDGE TECH? Zk (zero-knowledge) technology is one of the most interesting technologies in crypto and can potentially be very useful in situations that require privacy and security. Zk-tech increases privacy by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs to enable one party to prove to another party that something is true without revealing any information beyond the fact that it is true. For example, imagine you have a secret code you don't...

In the latest week funding dropped to some of the lowest levels we’ve seen in weeks. Total funding for the week ended 3/3/2023 fell from $324M to $103M and each sector’s funding declined. Infrastructure and Web3 & NFTs comprised most of the week’s funding, at $36M and $31M, respectively while CeFi and Mining didn’t receive any funding. The bulk of deals over the past month were Web3 & NFTs, at...

ANOTHER RINSE Last week, we talked about the futures market getting ahead of its skis, trading with increased leverage despite a continued lack of follow-through in spot market demand. Well, rates and the dollar have remained stubbornly high on the back of continued hawkish rhetoric from central bankers, and as we will discuss below, global liquidity has pulled back in recent weeks. Thus, bulls received another blow on Thursday evening...

BULLS OUT OVER THEIR SKIS IN THE SHORT TERM This was obviously a disappointing week for the bulls. We have yet to see the rollover in yields that we were anticipating in the near term, and as a result, crypto is starting to catch up with global equities.  We can see below that an apparently overzealous derivatives market exacerbated the lack of follow-through in the spot market. Below we map...

Funding saw a notable increase this week, rising 19.5% to $312 million from $261 million a week prior. Infrastructure and Web3 & NFTs were the two largest categories, raising $103 million and $70 million, respectively. This week's largest deal was a $70 million Series C round raised by Chain Reaction. Chain Reaction is focused on building out infrastructure like semiconductors which are needed for the blockchain industry to continue scaling....

What is Canto, the experimental Layer 1? Walter Teng, VP of Crypto Strategy, provides color to his latest DeFi Digest publication covering this experimental Layer 1. CRYPTO DEFI DIGEST - CANTO: THE EXPERIMENTAL LAYER 1 *Recorded February 22, 2023