Hello world, and welcome to Dove Mountain Weekly #3!
Today, we are diving into mega rounds (i.e. fundraising rounds that are higher than $20M).
The emergence of mega funds like a16z Crypto, Paradigm, and Polychain has been one of the biggest funding developments over the past year. Consequently, the later-stage ecosystem has been maturing since it has become harder for these mega funds to justify spending their time and capital on early-stage investments.
Then, has this underlying trend accelerated the closing of mega rounds? Are these mega rounds now driving the growth of the crypto fundraising ecosystem?
This year the number of mega rounds has been skyrocketing: 18 have been publicly announced in 2020, compared to more than 44 since January 2021. Some of the noteworthy latest mega rounds are:
Circle ($440M) — with participation from Fidelity, Digital Currency Group, and FTX.
BlockFi ($350M) — with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Paradigm, ParaFi Capital, Jump Capital, Kenetic, CMS Holdings, Valar Ventures, Breyer Capital, Susquehanna Government Products, and Castle Island Ventures.
Dapper Labs ($305M) — with participation from Coatue Management, The Chernin Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Venrock, USV, Version One, and many angels.
Blockchain.com ($300M) — with participation from DST Global, Vy Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, LG Group, and Baillie Gifford.
Bitso ($250M) — with participation from Tiger Global Management, Coatue Management, Paradigm, Bond Capital, Valor Capital Group, Pantera Capital, and QED Investors.
Zooming in, it is now obvious that mega rounds have become more mainstream in the space since the beginning of 2021. On average, there is a crypto mega round announced every 3 days, whereas we had to wait 19 days on average to read such news in 2020.
With more than $94M on average in 2021, the average amount raised during a crypto mega round has increased by 30% since last year, although the number of rounds announced has more than doubled. This constitutes another proof of the huge volume of capital flowing into the industry.
Feel free to have a look at Dove Mountain Data, the richest dataset ever publicly released on crypto fundraising rounds.
We have included last week’s 28 fundraising rounds:
Set ($14M) — with participation from 1kx, Hashed, Mechanism Capital, DeFiance Capital, The Spartan Group, Craft Ventures, Free Company, Threshold, Anthony Sassano, Ryan Adams, David Hoffman, DeFiDad, Bobby Ong, Jill Carlson, Mike Dudas, Cooper Turley, and Kain Warwick.
Defined — with participation from Version One Ventures, Tiny Capital, Rasool Rayani, Compound VC, Capital6 Eagle, Kamunting Street Capital, Mark Cuban, Inflection, Portico, and Balaji Srinivasan.
Circle ($440M) — with participation from Fidelity, Digital Currency Group, and FTX.
QuickNode ($5.3M) — with participation from Seven Seven Six, SoftBank, Arrington XRP Capital, Crossbeam, and Anthony Pompliano.
Meme.com ($5M) — with participation from Outlier Ventures, Digital Finance Group, Morningstar Ventures, Blockhype, Spark Digital Capital, Gabby Dizon, and Sandeep Nailwal.
Balancer ($24.25M) — with participation from Blockchain Capital, FinTech Collective, LongHash Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Kain Warwick, Continue Capital, and Jordan Momtazi.
Talos ($40M) — with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, PayPal Ventures, Fidelity, Galaxy Digital, Elefund, Illuminate Financial, and Steadfast Venture Capital.
Ledn ($30M) — with participation from Kingsway Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Susquehanna International Group, ParaFi Capital, Alexis Ohanian, John Pfeffer, CMT Digital, and Global Founders Capital.
Pintu ($6M) — with participation from Pantera Capital, Intudo Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Alameda Research, Blockchain.com, and others.
everFinance ($1M) — with participation from Hashkey Capital, SevenX Ventures, Arweave, Mask Network, OKEx BlockDream Fund, D1 Ventures, and Digital Renaissance.
Lossless ($2.245M) — with participation from DAO Maker, X21 Digital, Master Ventures, Magnus Capital, Hacken, Chandler Song, Ryan Fang, Poolz Ventures, and CyberFi.
Metacask — with participation from Crypto.com Capital, Vinny Lingham, Sunny Madra, and Bill Lee.
Cryption Network ($1.1M) — with participation from Sandeep Nailwal, Humayun Sheikh, Pranay Sanghavi, AU21 Capital, Waterdrip capital, X21 Digital, CMS Holdings, Genblock Capital, Ascensive Assets, Master Ventures, and GravityX Capital.
OneOf ($63M) — with participation from Tezos Foundation, Sangha Capital, Jack Herrick, Bill Tai, Suna Said, and Jaeson Ma.
Qilin Protocol ($800k) — with participation from Continue Capital, Fundamental Labs, MathWallet, Multicoin Capital, and Yuanyuzhou Ventures.
Evertas ($5.8M) — with participation from Morgan Creek Digital, CMT Digital, Hashkey Capital, RenGen.io, Fourth Revolution Capital, Centrality, Plug and Play, Vy Capital, James Slazas, Tyler Ward, Quinn Abrahams, Shy Datika, and Sandra Ro.
iMe ($1.9M) — with participation from OKEx BlockDream Fund, Litentry, Phoenix VC, YBB Foundation, Titans Ventures, and DEGO.
HoDooi.com ($4.3M) — with participation from Morningstar Ventures, Mentha Partners, ZBS Capital, Hillrise Capital, AU21 Capital, SwissBorg Ventures, Sora Ventures, DuckDAO, and Master Ventures.
Bware ($1.2M) — with participation from Morningstar Ventures, Moonrock Capital, The Spartan Group, GBV Capital, Waterdrip capital, Vendetta Capital, and others.
Chia Network ($61M) — with participation from Richmond Global Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.
Solidus Labs ($20M) — with participation from FTX, Evolution Partners, 645 Ventures, Chris Giancarlo, and others.
Mintlayer ($5.2M) — with participation from Alphabit Digital Currency Fund, Moonwhale Ventures, X21 Digital, 4SV, Iconomy Partners, AU21 Capital, Lotus Capital, Moonrock Capital, JUN Capital, ExNetwork Capital, CryptoDormFund, Matrix Ventures, BlackDragon Capital, Sky Ventures, Blockpact Capital, Moonfounder, Minted Labs, Seedventure, CSP DAO, Spykefast, Buildhodl, Kyros Ventures, Titans Ventures, BBSFinance, Lunar Station, Chain Ridge Capital, Phoenix VC, Caballeros Capital, Block26, Crypto Banter, Varys Capital, LVT Capital, Kairon Labs, and 01 Capital.
Certora ($7.2M) — with participation from Electric Capital, A.capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, Elad Gil, Eli Ben-Sasson, Framework Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Lemniscap, Scott Shenker, Semantic Ventures, Stani Kulechov, Uri Kolodny, and VMware.
Blocto ($8M) — with participation from Alameda Research, Quantstamp, Richard Ma, and others.
MCDEX ($7M) — with participation from Delphi Ventures, Alameda Research, Multicoin Capital, Fenbushi Capital, DeFiance Capital, Incuba Alpha Labs, DeFi Alliance, D1 Ventures, IOSG Ventures, NGC Ventures, OKEx BlockDream Fund, Horizon Capital, Zeuth Ventures, Bixin Ventures, Digital Renaissance, Mask Network, Plutus VC, Magic Ventures, Shata Capital, Finlink, ZBS Capital, and Meltem Demirors.
Skyrim Finance ($2.1M) — with participation from AU21 Capital, Spark Digital Capital, ExNetwork Capital, Blocksync Ventures, MANTRA DAO, X21 Digital, ZBS Capital, Kyros Ventures, VBC Ventures, Illusionist Group, Wings Ventures, GFS Ventures, Tenzor Capital, Titans Ventures, and Poolz Ventures.
StartFi ($1.4M) — with participation from Spark Digital Capital, MXC Exchange, AU21 Capital, Gate.io, X21 Digital, Blocksync Ventures, DFG (Dynamic Fintech Group), YouBi Capital, and Angelone Capital.
HaloDAO ($3.5M) — with participation from QCP Soteria, GBV Capital, The Spartan Group, NGC Ventures, LedgerPrime, CMS Holdings, Parataxis Capital, Genblock Capital, and Petrock Capital.
We have also added the following investors: Intudo Ventures, Math Foundation, Notre Dame Pit Road Fund, Zeuth Ventures, Angelone Capital, Elefund, Steadfast Venture Capital, Varys Capital, and many angels.
See you next week for another issue,
The Dove Mountain Team