Crypto Research

Funding was down this week, dropping from $607M to $241M, as total deals fell from 26 to 18. While infrastructure remained the highest funded sector at $158M, it declined nearly 68% from last week's huge week. The only sector that saw an increase from last week was NFTs. This was due entirely to a $54M raise for Doodles, which puts the Web3/NFT company at a whopping $704M valuation. We discuss this...

THE GOOD In what was undoubtedly one of the greatest instances of long-term collaboration and a celebration of human ingenuity, the Ethereum network finally converted from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake in the early morning hours on Thursday. Contrary to most of the Testnet Merges, there were essentially no hiccups, as the execution layer seamlessly merged with the Beacon Chain and miners powered down their GPUs for the final time (or migrated...

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS Just like that, we are less than a week away from one of the most consequential events in crypto history. If you are tired of hearing us talk about the Merge, trust us when we say we are also somewhat fatigued and are excited for what lies ahead for crypto in the post-Merge era. As of writing, the Merge is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September...

Funding had one of its best weeks of the past couple of months, with funding increasing 81% from last week to $574M. This increase was almost entirely due to an outstanding week from infrastructure – which accounted for $482M of funding and consisted of 8 deals. The largest of these deals was a raise for Mysten Lab’s Sui Blockchain, which we delve deeper into in the Deal of the Week section. This...