2024 Web3 Industry Development Research Report and Annual List

Original title: "RootData: 2024 Crypto Development Research Report and Annual Rankings"

Author: RootData Research

Crypto 2024 Venture Capital Market Review

The Crypto industry has entered the fourth wave of asset innovation, and the primary and secondary markets are highly conductive

With the passage of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, Crypto The industry development has a long-term and solid liquidity foundation. Overall, the primary market has a certain lag compared to the secondary market, but the transmission between the primary and secondary markets is obvious. The primary market showed a trend of rising first and then stabilizing in the first three quarters of 2024: the total financing amount in Q1 was US$2.545 billion (a slight increase of 0.76% year-on-year), and Q2 continued its upward momentum to climb to US$2.75 billion (a month-on-month increase of 8.05%). Although Q3 fell slightly to US$2.406 billion, it still increased significantly by 26.05% year-on-year.

In fact, the Crypto industry has entered the fourth wave of asset innovation, mainly driven by non-EVM MemeCoin, BRC20, AIGC, and RWA assets. In the past 12 months, the market does not seem to have reached a large-scale consensus on these asset innovations, which is also an important reason why the primary market cannot create a new price high like BTC. In our view, one of the laws of the development of the Crypto industry is to find the most consensus native new assets and realize the influx of funds driven by new assets.

Changes in transaction structure: In the past 12 months, 54.9% of institutions have not made a single investment, and only 12% of projects have completed two or more rounds of financing

Hot investment tracks and ecological competition: Base ecology is the L2 with the fastest growth in the past 12 months, and DeFi is considered the most undervalued track by more than 41% of investors

L1, DeFi, and AI tracks are the hottest. In the past 12 months, the projects with the most tags added are DeFi, Game, and AI, and Monad has the highest single financing

According to RootData statistics, DeFi has added the most tags for new projects in the past 12 months, followed by Game and AI sectors. However, it is worth noting that DeFi and AI are also the sectors with the highest popularity rankings in the past 12 months. Although Game is a popular tag added by new projects, it lags behind in the popularity rankings. This may be because Game has not created satisfactory results for users in terms of product or token price performance in the past four quarters.

Looking back at the top 10 investment and financing transactions in the past 12 months, Monad ranked first with a $225 million financing in April this year with a valuation of $3 billion. It is worth noting that among the top 10 transactions, in addition to the common CeFi, mining and other tracks with high capitalization requirements, Celestia’s $100 million OTC financing announced in September ranked among the top ten transactions, which may also reveal that OTC transactions will become one of the important trends in the industry.

List background and standards

Since the release of RootData List in 2023, its list results are being paid attention to by more entrepreneurs, investors, LPs and pan-Crypto enthusiasts. RootData is committed to showing the core strength and trend characteristics of industry development through rigorous data analysis.

The statistical time of this list is from October 31, 2023 to October 31, 2024, and a total of five lists are released, namely: Top 50 projects (completed TGE), Top 50 projects (not conducted TGE), Crypto VC Top 50 investment institutions, Top 10 angel investors, and Top 20 best CEOs.

Top50 projects (TGE completed)

• Liquidity characteristics: Tokens of 9 listed projects It is now listed on five major mainstream exchanges (Binance, OKX, Bybit, Upbit and Coinbase). Among them, 82% of the projects' tokens are listed on at least three major mainstream exchanges.

• Track characteristics: The projects on the list come from 22 tracks, most of which are Layer1, DeFi, and AI track projects. Compared with last year, this year's list has added 5 MemeCoin projects. This is because we believe that MemeCoin is building a new asset category and has demonstrated unique value in enriching the Crypto asset category and promoting Crypto out of the circle.

• Financing characteristics: The median financing of the listed projects is US$23.15 million, with an average of 2 rounds of financing. 13 of the listed projects did not conduct financing. It is worth mentioning that in the past 12 months, the top 5 projects calculated by FDMC/Raised are all on the list, Celestia (3,670x), Ondo Finance (1,819x), Jito (1,322x), Ethena (1,134x), and Sei (816x).

Top50 projects (TGE not completed)

• Financing characteristics: The median financing of the projects selected for this list is US$25.71 million, with an average of 2 rounds of financing. There are 7 projects valued at US$1 billion (inclusive), and 4 projects have not publicly disclosed financing.

• Track features: Most of the projects on the list cover 26 tracks, with modularization, DeFi, infrastructure, and AI accounting for a large proportion. In the past four quarters, although GameFi, CeFi, and NFT tracks have fallen into a period of innovation stagnation, we still selected projects with innovative representatives in these tracks.

Crypto VC Top50

The 50 institutions on the list have made an average of 28 shots and an average of 7 lead investments in the past four quarters. To a certain extent, these institutions have shaped the investment trends and characteristics of Crypto in the past four quarters. 46% of the institutions are located in North America, 20% are located in China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), and the remaining 34% are located in Singapore, Dubai and other places.

Among the selected institutions, Crypto native investment institutions (including the Crypto project strategic investment departments of traditional investment institutions) account for about 80%, and the rest are traditional investment institutions. Different types of institutions are driving the early entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem of Crypto to become more robust.

Angel Investors

Nowadays, the angel investor group is rising rapidly. Currently, RootData has included 2,037 angel investors (who have invested at least once). These active angel investors are mainly successful Crypto entrepreneurs. In the past 12 months, the average number of investments by the top 10 angel investors was 18. As the angel investor group continues to grow, the early innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem of Crypto will become healthier.

CEO Top20

According to an investor survey released by RootData in September, 75% of investors are listing CEO and team as the first factor in investment considerations. RootData currently includes 1,827 Crypto project CEOs. We believe that high-quality Crypto CEOs are scarce resources and are the most critical force in the development and growth of the industry.

About RootData

RootData is a data platform for Web3 asset discovery and tracking. It is the first to encapsulate the on-chain and off-chain data of Web3 assets. The data is more structured and readable, and it is committed to becoming a productivity-level tool for Web3 enthusiasts and investors.