2024 Financing Report: 1,259 financings, US$9.615 billion, the overall market trend is similar to last year

Author: Zen, PANews

Chunjiang Plumbing Duck Prophet believes that project financing information is an important signal for market development. It not only reflects the project's own competitiveness, but also shows the flow and confidence of market funds, and also indicates the direction and trend of innovation. PANews regularly launches the " Financing Weekly " column every Monday morning, continuing to record weekly financing market information. At the end of the year, based on the financing information throughout the year, we review the overall primary market performance this year to provide investors with a reference.

Overview of the investment and financing market in 2024

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, a total of 1,259 investment and financing events were disclosed in the primary market in the field of cryptocurrency and blockchain in 2024, with the total capital scale exceeding US$9.3 billion. Judging from the total number and scale of financing, the investment and financing market situation this year is basically the same as that in 2023 , when 1,174 transactions completed a total of US$9.615 billion in financing. Compared with the 1,660 investment and financing events in 2022 , with the total amount of funds exceeding US$34.8 billion, a more stable trend has been formed in the past two years, and investment transactions tend to be more cautious and rational.

It is worth mentioning that, in addition to being close in total amount, the fluctuation trend of "total financing" and "financing quantity" this year and 2023 are also very similar.

First, the crypto investment and financing market got off to a good start again and reached its peak from March to May. The financing scale in March exceeded US$1.03 billion. This is also the only single-month financing amount this year to exceed US$1 billion. month. The closest ones are in April, May and October, where the funding scale was all above US$950 million;

Second, after the "intense attack" at the beginning, it began to weaken in the middle, and entered a low period from June to September. During this period, the monthly number of financing events disclosed only exceeded 100 in August, while the financing scale in July and September was less than US$600 million;

Thirdly, there was a sudden surge after entering the fourth quarter. The 106 investment and financing events disclosed in October and over US$957 million in financing were the best performance in a single month in the second half of this year. Although it was weak again in the following November, the performance of the primary market in December was also outstanding. As of December 22, the financing scale in that month had exceeded US$818 million.

As the industry evolves, the narrative themes and categories of startups are richer and more diverse than ever. According to market hotspots, PANews roughly divides projects into eight tracks: DeFi, Web3 games, infrastructure and tools, AI, DePIN, centralized finance, consumer and others, and makes statistics on the investment and financing in each track. .

As the track most favored by capital for a long time, the number and amount of investment and financing transactions in infrastructure and tools are the largest among all tracks, with 381 transactions and US$3.66 billion respectively; the second most popular track this year is DeFi. , its two data were 296 cases and 1.69 billion US dollars respectively, both ranking second; Centralized finance is the only category in the track other than infrastructure and tools and DeFi with a capital scale exceeding US$1 billion, and its average financing amount is also the highest, reaching US$14.92 million; AI projects are growing rapidly this year as an emerging category. The number of financing events disclosed by it is nearly 100, with the capital scale being around US$600 million.

The specific statistics of each track are detailed below.

Infrastructure & Tools

Of all the projects that completed financing this year, 30% were in the infrastructure & tools track, and the amount raised accounted for 39.46% of the total. This track also announced the most large-amount financing news. Its investment and financing events of tens of millions of dollars and above accounted for 27.82%. Among them, there were 6 cases with financing scales of hundreds of millions of dollars, and financing scales of tens of millions of dollars. Up to 106.

The financing trend of the Infrastructure & Tools track is roughly the same as that of the overall track. This track disclosed up to 48 financing news in February; its single-month financing peak occurred in March, exceeding US$543 million.

In December, the Avalanche Foundation raised $250 million through a private token sale, the largest single financing of the year. This round of financing was led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital, and more than 40 companies including SkyBridge and Morgan Creek Digital participated in the investment.

In addition, in October this year, the payment company Stripe acquired the stablecoin payment platform Bridge for US$1.1 billion, which is also the largest acquisition in the encryption industry to date. Bridge aims to build a global payment network for stablecoins and provide companies with software tools and technical support to accept stablecoin payments. It is worth mentioning that in this acquisition, Sequoia Capital, which owns 16% of Bridge’s shares, is expected to receive more than US$100 million in proceeds from the acquisition.

DeFi

The DeFi track took the lead in breaking out in February this year, with financing in that month exceeding US$266 million, the highest level in the whole year. This is mainly due to a16z’s investment of US$100 million in the Ethereum re-pledge protocol EigenLayer. This is also the only project on this track to raise more than 100 million yuan this year. It boosted the confidence of the crypto venture capital market when the form was still unclear. Putting this factor aside, DeFi’s best-performing month was May. It disclosed 42 investment and financing events, the most this year, and the financing scale also reached US$213 million.

As mentioned above, the number of investment and financing events and financing scale of DeFi were 296 and US$1.69 billion respectively, accounting for 23.51% and 18.22% respectively. Among the financing news disclosed by DeFi projects, there are 40 projects with financing scales in the tens of millions of dollars, accounting for 13.51%, and most of them are concentrated in the multi-million dollar range.

Web3 games

Compared with the turmoil in 2022, the game track will be much deserted this year. In 2022, the Web3 gaming circuit announced 334 investment and financing events, with a total financing scale of US$4.4 billion, of which projects with a scale of over ten million US dollars accounted for as high as 30%; in 2024, this proportion was only 13.41%. In addition, among the financing events disclosed this year, the highest was the USD 42.7 million Series A financing completed by Azra Games, a blockchain video game development company.

March is undoubtedly the most outstanding month for Web3 games this year, with its total financing reaching a peak of US$155 million. During this period, the market has successively disclosed that the NFT card game Parallel has completed 7 million-dollar financings, including 35 million U.S. dollars, and there were 24 financings exceeding 10 million dollars throughout the year.

Judging from statistics, perhaps due to the rise of other narratives such as AI and DeSci, and the fact that multiple game projects that received large amounts of financing in the last round are still under development, pending market testing, Web3 games may no longer be promising. "Star of Hope"; on the other hand, as mini-games on Telegram, especially click-to-earn games, continue to attract tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of players, investment in 3A chain games that require a lot of money and a long development cycle is required The attractiveness of investors is declining.

Web3+ AI

As the mainstream narrative of the entire technology industry, the combination of AI, blockchain and cryptocurrency has also become the direction chosen by many start-up companies. Different from the trend of the overall primary market, the AI ​​​​track has expanded and developed rapidly this year, and has basically been on an upward trend.

Looking at the quarterly cycle, the AI ​​track announced 34 financing events in the third quarter, with the scale of funding reaching US$286 million, both the highest this year. In the fourth quarter, although the overall popularity declined slightly, it was still much higher than that in the first and second quarters.

In terms of funding scale, 15.2% of AI projects have received tens of millions of dollars in funding. Among them, the open source AI platform Sentient raised 85 million in a seed round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures. US dollars, the largest financing for the track.

DePIN

DePIN projects are another track that has seen significant growth after AI. There were 47 investment and financing events throughout the year, with a financing scale of nearly US$280 million. Among them, 9 financing events were in the tens of millions of dollars, accounting for 19.56%.

The US$50 million financing completed by the Internet of Things blockchain platform IoTeX is the largest financing on the track; Solana ecological DePIN protocol io.net and Ethereum-based blockchain solar company Glow both tied for second place with US$30 million in funding. , occurred in March and October respectively. It is worth mentioning that the DePIN track remained basically stable in the first and second half of the year, with its highest raised of US$84.05 million raised in the third quarter.

Centralized Finance

This year, there is only one case of financing close to hundreds of millions in the centralized financial field, that is, HashKey Group, a digital asset financial services group, completed nearly US$100 million in Series A financing at a pre-money valuation of more than US$1.2 billion. In addition, there are 30 investment and financing projects in this track reaching tens of millions, accounting for 43.48%. Its average financing amount of US$14.92 million is also the highest among all tracks. It is worth mentioning that in the second quarter, when the overall market was the hottest, the performance of the centralized financial track was mediocre, with both the number of financing and the scale of funds being the lowest throughout the year.

consumer applications

In the statistical process, consumer applications cover entertainment including music and streaming media, SocialFi, NFT, prediction markets, media, gambling, education, insurance, research and information, etc. The performance of this category was particularly outstanding in May, with 26 investment and financing events announced in a single month, with a capital scale of US$307 million. This is mainly due to the US$150 million financing completed by Farcaster, the Web3 social media platform announced in May, and the US$70 million financing completed by Polymarket, a prediction platform that made a splash in the US presidential election. This is also the largest amount of financing received by this track. of two projects.

According to statistics, a total of 157 investment and financing events were disclosed in the consumer sector, with a capital scale of US$817 million. In terms of funding scale, only 11.16% of consumer projects have completed tens of millions of dollars in financing, ranking lowest among all tracks.

other

Other categories include blockchain applications in traditional industries such as encrypted mining, DAO, DeSci, task reward platforms, medical care, and logistics. The number of disclosed investment and financing events was 38, the lowest in the entire track, and the capital scale exceeded US$350 million. Within this broad category, crypto mining companies play an important role. In terms of funding scale, the US$150 million investment received by crypto miner Hut 8 and the US$80 million Series B financing completed by mining machine manufacturer Auradine ranked top two, both of which were made public in the second quarter.

investment institutions

According to incomplete statistics, a total of 47 crypto investment funds were launched in 2024, with a total scale of US$4.34 billion. Among them, 13 have raised funds exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars. Paradigm, which was once criticized for "defecting" the encryption industry, announced in mid-June that it had raised US$850 million for its third fund, which will focus on early-stage encryption projects. This is also the largest fund in 2024.

It is worth mentioning that a16z announced in April that it had raised US$7.2 billion, and the final total exceeded the company’s earlier fundraising target by about 4%. Although it was not included in the statistics, as an investment institution with a top reputation in the cryptocurrency industry, a16z will certainly have a large amount of funds used to invest in industry-related projects in the future.

In addition, a number of project parties have launched a total of 15 ecological funds this year, with a total scale of US$594 million. Among them, the US$150 million Open Loot fund announced by Big Time Studios is the largest. It aims to promote game development on the Web3 game platform Open Loot and provide financial support, marketing and development guidance for game studios.