Author: Zen, PANews
The spring river warms up and the ducks know it first. The financing information of projects is an important signal for the development of the market, which not only reflects the competitiveness of the projects themselves, but also shows the direction of market capital flow and confidence, and also foreshadows the direction and trend of innovation. PANews regularly publishes the 《Financing Weekly》 column every Monday morning, continuously recording the financing market information of the week. As the year draws to a close, based on the financing information throughout the year, we review the overall performance of the primary market this year to provide a reference for investors.
Overview of the Investment and Financing Market in 2024
According to incomplete statistics by PANews, there were 1,259 disclosed investment and financing events in the cryptocurrency and blockchain field in the primary market in 2024, with a total capital scale of over $93 billion. In terms of the total number and scale of financing, the investment and financing market situation this year is basically the same as 2023, with 1,174 transactions completed with $96.15 billion in financing. Compared with 2022, which had 1,660 investment and financing events and a total capital of over $348 billion, the past two years have formed a more stable trend, and investment transactions tend to be more cautious and rational.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to being close in total volume, the fluctuating trends of "total financing amount" and "number of financing events" this year are also very similar to 2023.
First, the cryptocurrency investment and financing market got off to a good start again, and reached a peak from March to May, with the financing scale in March exceeding $103 million, which was the only month this year with a single-month financing amount exceeding $100 million. The financing scale in April, May, and October was also over $95 million.
Secondly, after the "fierce attack" at the beginning, it began to lose momentum in the middle stage, and entered a low ebb period from June to September. During this period, the number of financing events disclosed only exceeded 100 in August, and the financing scale in July and September was less than $60 million.
Thirdly, after entering the fourth quarter, it suddenly experienced a surge, with 106 investment and financing events disclosed in October and over $957 million in financing, which was the best single-month performance in the second half of the year. Although it was weak again in November, the primary market performance in December was also eye-catching, with the financing scale exceeding $818 million as of December 22.
With the development of the industry, the narrative themes and categories of startups are more diverse than before. According to market hotspots, PANews has roughly divided the projects into eight tracks: DeFi, Web3 games, infrastructure and tools, AI, DePIN, centralized finance, consumer, and others, and has counted the investment and financing situation of each track.
As the track that has been the most favored by capital for a long time, the number and amount of investment and financing transactions in the infrastructure and tools track are the highest among all tracks, with 381 events and $36.6 billion respectively; the second most popular track this year is DeFi, with 296 events and $16.9 billion respectively, both ranking second; centralized finance is the only track other than infrastructure and tools, and DeFi with a capital scale exceeding $1 billion, and its average financing amount is the highest at $14.92 million; AI projects, as an emerging category, have grown rapidly this year, with nearly 100 financing events disclosed and a capital scale of around $600 million.
The specific statistics of each track are detailed below.
Infrastructure & Tools
Among all the projects that completed financing this year, 30% belong to the infrastructure & tools track, and the amount they raised accounts for 39.46% of the total. This track also announced the most large-scale financing news, with 27.82% of the financing events at the $10 million level and above, including 6 financing events over $100 million and 106 at the $10 million level.
The financing situation of the infrastructure & tools track is basically the same as the overall trend, with the most disclosures of 48 financing events in February; its single-month financing peak occurred in March, exceeding $543 million.
In December, the Avalanche Foundation raised $250 million through a private token sale, which was the largest single financing event of the year. This round of financing was led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital, with more than 40 companies including SkyBridge and Morgan Creek Digital participating in the investment.
In addition, in October this year, the payment company Stripe acquired the stablecoin payment platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, which is the largest acquisition in the cryptocurrency industry to date. Bridge aims to build a global payment network for stablecoins and provide software tools and technical support for enterprises to accept stablecoin payments. It is worth mentioning that in this acquisition, Sequoia Capital, which owns a 16% stake in Bridge, is expected to gain over $100 million in returns from the acquisition transaction.
DeFi
The DeFi track first exploded in February this year, with a financing scale of over $266 million that month, which was the highest of the year. This is mainly due to a16z's $100 million investment in the Ethereum re-pledge protocol EigenLayer, which is the only project in this track with a financing scale of over $100 million this year, and it boosted the confidence of the cryptocurrency venture capital market when the form was still unclear. Excluding this factor, the best-performing month for DeFi was May, with 42 disclosed investment and financing events, the most this year, and a financing scale of $213 million.
As mentioned above, the number of investment and financing events and the financing scale of DeFi are 296 and $16.9 billion respectively, accounting for 23.51% and 18.22% respectively. Among the financing news disclosed by DeFi projects, there are 40 financing events at the $10 million level, accounting for 13.51%, and they are more concentrated in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Web3 Games
Compared to the bustling 2022, the game track is much quieter this year. In 2022, the Web3 game track announced 334 investment and financing events, with a total financing scale of $44 billion, of which projects with a scale of over $10 million accounted for as high as 30%; while in 2024, this proportion is only 13.41%. In addition, the highest financing event disclosed this year was the $42.7 million Series A round of the blockchain video game developer Azra Games.
March was undoubtedly the most outstanding month for Web3 games this year, with a financing total of $155 million. During this period, the market successively disclosed 7 financing events of over $10 million, including the $35 million financing of the NFT card game Parallel, and a total of 24 financing events of over $10 million throughout the year.
