Binance notes stability in crypto venture funding

Despite the overall downtrend in 2023, in the third quarter the crypto market demonstrated resilience, maintaining a steady pace of venture deals and investment volumes. This is stated in the Binance Research report. Binance Research.

During the previous bull market, funding for crypto projects continually grew and reached a peak in April 2022 at $6.8 billion. However after that the figure began to fall sharply, by early 2023 down to $2 billion.

For the July-September period, total investments in the Web3-oriented sector amounted to about $2.5 billion. The total number of deals during the reporting period declined to 169, of which 81 were seed rounds.

Gaming ($645 million), payments ($485 million) and trading platforms ($394 million) lead in attracting investment.

“Sustained investments by venture capitalists in the gaming industry bode well for its expansion. They are accompanied by increased funding of AI and data providers. In Q3 there was a noticeable shift toward these areas, including DEX,” noted the researchers.

Among the new “unicorns”:

• payments solution Ramp — valuation $5.8 billion;
• omnichain protocol LayerZero — valuation $3 billion;
• blockchain infrastructure provider Copper — valuation $3 billion.

Despite quarterly declines in the number of unique investors, last quarter it slowed to 5.9%. Coinbase Ventures leads in the number of deals over the past year — 51.

“The reputation and involvement of other investors can be a factor in many venture firms’ investment decisions, implying the potential importance of ‘social proof’,” the report says.

Experts also noted inflows from traditional venture firms into digital assets. About 41% of Q3 investments came from them, and the most active firm was Hack VC with 19 deals.

Binance highlighted projects across categories with the highest capital raised:

• DeFi — Brine Finance ($16.5 million);
• CeFi — BitGo ($100 million);
• NFT — Mocaverse ($20 million);
• GameFi — Proof of Play ($100 million);
• SocialFi — Story Protocol ($25 million);
• Tools and information — Anytype ($13.4 million);
• L1/L2 — RISC Zero ($40 million);
• Infrastructure — Futureverse ($54 million).

Earlier Binance released a global quarterly report on the state of the crypto market. According to the document, the period from July to August proved difficult — the overall capitalization of the industry declined by 8.6%.