Crypto venture capital funding has reached over $1 billion for the second month in a row this year.
In April, the sector secured $1.02 billion through 161 investment rounds, a slight decline from March’s $1.09 billion gathered from 186 rounds, data from RootData shows. This marks the first occurrence of back-to-back monthly funding over $1 billion since late 2022.
Key investments for the month included a $47 million round led by BlackRock for asset tokenization company Securitize and a significant $225 million funding for Monad, a new blockchain platform often touted as a “Solana killer,” backed by heavyweights like Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures.
Additionally, blockchain infrastructure company Auradine and Cosmos-based blockchain Berachain secured substantial investments of $80 million and $100 million, respectively.
Blockchain infrastructure ventures topped the funding charts in 2024 with $1.7 billion, followed by decentralized finance protocols which raised $626 million. Conversely, decentralized autonomous organizations received the least funding, totaling just $3 million for the year.
To date in 2024, the industry has attracted $3.67 billion across 604 rounds, positioning it to potentially surpass the $9.3 billion raised in 2023.
Since June 2014, the blockchain sector has seen over $100 billion in funding through 5,195 rounds, according to data from DeFiLlama.
This surge in funding coincides with prominent venture capital firms Pantera Capital and Paradigm seeking substantial amounts for new cryptocurrency funds, with targets of $1 billion and $850 million respectively.
A $1 billion fund from Pantera Capital would be the largest in the crypto sector since May 2022 when Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) set a record with a $4.5 billion raise.
In a related development, a16z announced in May that it had raised $7.2 billion for investments across various technology sectors including artificial intelligence and gaming, though it decided not to increase its cryptocurrency-focused fund.