Crypto venture capital investments increased by 26.1% in 2024 from the previous year, with 1,535 projects publicly disclosed, according to a report from Wu Blockchain citing statistics from RootData.
The report highlighted a total of 102 publicly disclosed crypto-VC investment projects in December, reflecting a 7.4% month-over-month (MoM) increase from the 95 projects in November. However, this represents a decrease of 6.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) from the 109 projects in December 2023.
Total funding for December reached $740 million, a 60.9% month-on-month increase from November’s $460 million, but an 18.7% year-over-year decline from $910 million. December 2023 dollars.
For the full year, disclosed funding was $9.33 billion, slightly exceeding 2023’s $9.28 billion by 0.5%.
Sectoral distribution
At the sector level, DeFi leads with 24.4% of total projects, followed by NFT/GameFi at 15.1%, layer 1 and layer 2 solutions at 11%, and artificial intelligence (AI) projects ) at 9.6%.
Centralized finance (CeFi) accounted for 5.7%, with real-world assets (RWA) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) projects accounting for 8.8%. Portfolio tools and infrastructure accounted for 7.3% of the total.
Among the largest funding rounds of 2024, Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge in October emerged as the largest in the crypto sector.
Australian crypto mining company Iris Energy raised $413.4 million through share issuance in the first half, while Avalanche secured $250 million in December through a token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital.
Other offers
Monad Labs raised $225 million in April to develop a layer 1 blockchain compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine, and Blockstream secured $210 million in October to expand its layer 2 technologies.
Meanwhile, Robinhood announced plans to acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, with completion expected in the first half of 2025.
Other notable deals include Bitfarms’ acquisition of Stronghold Digital for $175 million, CleanSpark’s merger with GRIID Infrastructure for $155 million, and Hut 8’s $150 million strategic investment to expand the infrastructure of AI.
Additionally, decentralized social protocol Farcaster raised $150 million in May, bringing its valuation to $1 billion.
