Blockchain/DApp Investment Round-Up: May & June 2020 Edition
July 5, 2020
The blockchain landscape is constantly reshaping itself as new companies emerge daily, those established strengthen their positions, the industry matures and investors dedicate more capital to see the greater ecosystem. Thus, I think it’s important to highlight not just the use cases and new opportunities, but also the recent investments made throughout the industry. If you’ve had a chance to catch my quarterly updates on the landscape, I cover this topic in-depth from the recent activity, leading investors and categories, to the three-year trending cycles we’ve witnessed over the last decade — we’re currently at the beginning of a new cycle in 2020. More on this topic in another article, first let’s get to the investments made during May and June 2020.
May 2020
We’ll start off with Merger & Acquisitions (M&A), both of which caused major waves throughout the community and filled crucial gaps their now parent companies needed solving:
May continued 2020’s upward trend of seeing an increased amount of venture capital invested.
- Robinhood, $280.0M, investors include: Sequoia Capital (lead), 9Yards Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Ribbit Capital, Unusual Ventures
- NEAR Protocol, $21.6M, Andreessen Horowitz (lead), Animal Ventures, Blockchange Ventures, Distributed Global, Electric Capital, Libertus Capital, Pantera Capital
- FalconX, $17.0M, investors include: Accel, Accomplice, Avon Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners
- Altr, $15.0M, investors include: John Stafford III
- Briq, $10.0M, investors include: Blackhorn Ventures (lead), Darling Ventures, Eniac Ventures, MetaProp Ventures
- Abra, $5.0M, Stellar Development Foundation
- HUB Security, $5.0M, investors include: AXA Venture Partners (lead), OurCrowd
- Fortmatic, $4.0M, investors include: Placeholder (lead), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Naval Ravikant, SV Angel, Social Capital
- Lolli, $3.0M, investors include: Founders Fund (lead), Pathfinder (lead), Adam Leber, Bain Capital Ventures, Brian Sugar, Chapter One Ventures, Company Ventures, Craft Ventures, Digital Currency Group, FJ Labs, Michelle Phan, Pir Granoff, Sound Ventures, Version One Ventures
- CoinDCX, $2.5M, investors include: Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital
- SatoshiPay, $550K investors include: Stellar
June 2020
Last month there was no M&A activity within the landscape, however, we continued to see more big-name infrastructure deals. Here’s the list:
- AVA Labs, $12.0M, investors include: Bitmain (lead), Galaxy Digital (lead), Initialized Capital (lead), Dragonfly Capital, NGC Ventures
- Hut 8, $8.3M
- Pexapark, $6.75M, investors include: BayWa r.e. Energy Ventures, Encavis, RP Global
- DMarket $6.5M, investors include: Almaz Capital (lead)
- CrossTower, $6.0M, investors include: Gerard Lopez (lead)
- River Financial, $5.7M, investors include: Polychain Capital (lead), Castle Island Ventures, Cygni Capital, DG Lab, IDEO CoLab Ventures, Pfeffer Capital, Steve Lee, Slow Ventures
- Blockdaemon, $5.5M, investor include: Blockchain, Boldstart Ventures, CoinFund, CoinShares, Comcast Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Hashkey, Heavybit, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, SPiCE VC
- The Graph (Graph Protocol), $5.0M, investors include: CoinIX, Coinbase Ventures, DTC Capital, Digital Currency Group, Framework Venture Partners, Multicoin Capital Management, ParaFi Capital, Tally Capital
- Sparrow, $3.5M, investors include: HDR Group (lead), Du Capital, FinLab EOS VC, Signum Capital
- SynchroLife, $2.6M, investors include: Ceres, Giftee, MTG Ventures, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Orient Corporation, Sansei Capital Investment
- Opyn $2.16M, investors include: Dragonfly Capital (lead), 1kx, A.Capital Ventures, CoinFund, DTC Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Version One Ventures
- Unum ID, $2.0M, investors include: Draper Associates (lead), Hard Yaka, TappanHill Ventures, Wedbush Ventures
- Upvest $1.01M, investors include: European Regional Development Fund (lead)
- Axie Infinity, investors include: Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab
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🎙️ Research: State of the Blockchain & DApps 2020:
Available now, for free is my latest research on Decentralized Applications or DApp “Stack” Landscape Map — the Q2 2020 edition. This map provides a full overview and taxonomy of the emerging DApps industry highlighting over 400 global companies teaching playing a vital role in building next-generation applications. As a bonus, I’ve included some of the ecosystem players and groups you need to be familiar with as you prepare to release your applications. If this is the first version you’ve seen of the landscape, consider it your guiding roadmap to further understanding not only the industry but all the core technology required to build a full or partial Decentralized Application (DApp).
Additionally, you can find my Q1 2020 research on the entire Blockchain Landscape. This is now the fifth edition of the landscape. You’ll find over the map includes 747 companies (900+ total unique + broader key Ecosystem players) that have seen $22 bn+ USD in funding raised from 2010–2020 — over $18 bn invested alone since 2017!
