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The first four months of 2024 saw a flurry of crypto venture capital (VC) investments to raise hopes that the crypto VC funding landscape has finally woken up from a bear market-induced lull that started in late 2022.
Crypto VCs are investing in a variety of sectors ranging from decentralized social to restaking protocols and layer one (L1) blockchains to modular blockchain solutions.
In this article, we list the top 10 crypto venture capital (VC) investments seen in 2024 as of April 29.
So, who are the crypto VC funding winners so far this year?
Key Takeaways
- Crypto VC funding has bounced back from near-three-year lows hit in Q3 2024.
- Decentralized socials, modular blockchain solutions, DePINs, and restaking are key themes in 2024’s crypto VC funding landscape.
- Monad Labs raised $225 million in April 2024 to develop Monad L1.
- Ethereum restaking solution EigenLayer raised $100 million in February 2024.
- The company behind a decentralized social protocol, Farcaster, was valued at $1 billion.
- Show Full Guide
Top 10 Crypto Venture Capital Deals of 2024
1. Monad Labs – $225 Million
In early April 2024, Monad Labs announced that it raised $225 million in a funding round led by crypto VC firm Paradigm. Electric Capital, Wintermute Ventures, and Animoca Ventures were among several other crypto venture capital firms involved in the deal.
Monad Labs is developing an L1 blockchain called Monad to challenge the dominance of Ethereum (ETH). Monad L1 is unique in its designs as it breaks away from Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap – a dominant trend in the industry – to create a standalone L1 that combines the best of Ethereum and Solana (SOL).
Monad L1 is an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible chain, allowing it to take advantage of EVM’s global popularity and battle-tested nature. Additionally, Monad L1 has a parallel execution system like Solana that allows it to execute several transactions at the same time.
Monad Labs is excited to announce a $225M fundraise, led by @paradigm pic.twitter.com/cRchQd506k
— Monad ? (@monad_xyz) April 9, 2024
2. Eigen Labs – $100 Million
In February 2024, Eigen Labs announced that crypto VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) invested $100 million in the company.
Eigen Labs is developing an Ethereum restaking protocol called EigenLayer and a data availability solution called EigenDA.
EigenLayer introduced restaking on Ethereum, where ETH stakers can restake their liquid staking tokens (LST) like stETH and rETH on EigenLayer.
As of April 29, 2024, EigenLayer had amassed the second-highest total locked value (TVL) among all decentralized applications (dApps) at over $15 billion. Only staking platform Lido had a higher TVL than EigenLayer at the time of writing, according to DeFiLlama.
Accelerating Ethereum Together: @eigenlayer ? @a16zcrypto
We are excited to announce that Eigen Labs, the core development team contributing to EigenLayer and @eigen_da, has raised $100 million from a16z crypto.https://t.co/M2JQ8HZZ0h
— EigenLayer (@eigenlayer) February 22, 2024
3. Berachain – $100 Million
In April 2024, a Cosmos-based Ethereum-compatible L1 chain called Berachain raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures. Other notable crypto VC investors were Polychain Capital and Hashkey Capital, among others.
Berachain started as an NFT project called Bong Bears in August 2021. The project pivoted to launch an L1 chain in 2022.
According to its pseudonymous co-founder Smokey the Bera, the Berachain L1 will use a variant of delegated proof-of-stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism called Proof of Liquidity (PoL). In PoL, the only way to earn Berachain’s staking token, called BFT, is by providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges and lending protocols on the chain.
According to Crunchbase, the latest funding round values Berachain at $1.5 billion.
We're thrilled to announce our $100M Series B round, co-led by @BHDigitalAssets and @hiFramework pic.twitter.com/yyDKmpBN7u
— Berachain ??? (@berachain) April 12, 2024
4. Merkle Manufactory
In late March 2024, Bloomberg reported that Merkle Manufactory – the company behind the decentralized social network Farcaster – raised a new funding round with Paradigm as the lead investor.
According to Bloomberg, the deal will see Merkle Manufactory valued at over $1 billion. Although the fundraising has not been officially announced by Merkle Manufactory, co-founder Dan Romero confirmed that the company was “closing a new round of financing.”
Farcaster is an Optimism (OP)-based protocol that hosts decentralized social networking applications.
Farcaster has been a huge hit within the crypto community, scaling from 5,000+ daily users in 2023 to over 50,000+ daily users by April 2024.
5. Freechat – $80 Million
In January 2024, Hong Kong-based Freechat raised $80 million in a Series A funding round. The names of the investors were not disclosed.
Freechat is a blockchain-powered social platform that offers users control over their data and a censorship-free platform. An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm called Freechat AI is among its key features, and it uses machine learning (ML) for content recommendation and personalized user experience.
Freechat has a native token called FCC, which boasted a market cap of $9.2 million as of April 29, 2024, according to CoinMarketCap.
6. IO Research – $30 Million
In March 2024, AI-focused blockchain startup IO Research announced that it raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Hack VC. Several other crypto VC firms, including Multicoin Capital and Delphi Digital, participated.
IO Research is currently developing a Solana-based decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) called io.net that provides permissionless access to graphics processing units (GPU) capacity.
BREAKING: https://t.co/WLXlHkvE4z has raised $30M to build the largest decentralized GPU network in the world and solve the AI compute shortage.
The Series A round was led by Hack VC with participation from Multicoin Capital, 6th Man Ventures, M13, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs,…
— io.net (@ionet) March 5, 2024
7. Avail – $27 Million
In February 2024, Polygon-affiliated modular blockchain startup Avail announced a $27 million seed round led by Dragonfly Capital and Peter Theil’s Founders Fund.
Avail is developing a data availability layer called Avail DA, an interoperability-focused rollup called Avail Nexus, and a security rollup called Avail Fusion.
According to Avail, the latest fundraising round will “supercharge the development of Avail’s Unification Layer,” which refers to the Avail platform that will use the above-mentioned solutions to power “hundreds of chains, each with its own security and interoperability considerations.”
Realizing that Avail had to become a credibly neutral DA layer to scale multiple blockchains and unify different ecosystems, Avail became an independent entity in 2023 and is now backed by Peter Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, Dragonfly Capital and many other prominent VCs and angels. pic.twitter.com/wUXp0AdL5s
— Avail (@AvailProject) April 26, 2024
8. Ether Finance – 27 Million
In February 2024, Ethereum-based liquid staking solution Ether.fi announced that it raised $27 million in an investment round led by Bullish and CoinFund. Other notable crypto VC firms that participated in the deal were Amber, OKX Ventures, and Bankless Ventures, among others.
Ether.fi launched in November 2023. The protocol enables users to stake their ETH and automatically restake it on EigenLayer.
Ether.fi returns eETH tokens to ETH stakers. The eETH tokens earn Ethereum staking rewards, EigenLayer staking rewards, and loyalty points for holders. Ether.fi’s TVL stood at $3.95 billion as of April 29, 2024.
We’ve raised $27M led by @Bullish and @coinfund_io!
Crypto is back baby!
We had a huge number of amazing investors participate in this round and now have 95+ investors backing https://t.co/gbHcksxzp2@ambergroup_io@BanklessVC@OKX_Ventures@Consensys@SeliniCapital… pic.twitter.com/u7OCPqnbak
— ether.fi (@ether_fi) February 28, 2024
9. Polyhedra Network – $20 Million
In March 2024, Polyhedra Network announced that the company raised $20 million in a strategic funding round, which took the company’s valuation to $1 billion.
The crypto VC investment in Polyhedra Network was led by Polychain Capital with participation from Animoca Brands, Hashkey Capital, and UoB Ventures, among others.
Polyhedra Network is developing a zero-knowledge (ZK) interoperability protocol called zkBridge. According to the company, zkBridge has facilitated over 20 million cross-chain transactions between over 25 blockchain networks.
Web3 infrastructure provider @PolyhedraZK closed a $20 million strategic funding round led by @polychain valuing the company at $1 billion. By @willcanny99.https://t.co/zZhJbjhZGv
— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) March 14, 2024
10. Ethena Labs – $14 Million
In February 2024, synthetic dollar startup Ethena Labs announced that it raised a $14 million seed extension round led by DragonFly Capital.
Ethena Labs is the team behind an Ethereum-based protocol called Ethena. The protocol allows approved market-making counterparties to mint a synthetic dollar called USDe.
USDe is a US dollar-pegged cryptocurrency backed by staked ETH and Bitcoin (BTC). Its dollar peg is maintained through the use of delta hedging derivatives positions against collateral (staked ETH and BTC).
Ethena’s TVL stood at $2.345 billion as of April 29, 2024. USDe was the eighth biggest USD stablecoin at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
The Bottom Line
It is inspiring to see crypto VC activity bounce back in 2024. Not so long ago, the industry saw crypto venture funding drop to a?near three-year low in the third quarter of 2023.
Looking forward, the growing popularity of decentralized social, restaking protocol, AI, and ZK technology are expected to drive crypto venture capital in 2024.
