Top 10 Crypto Venture Capital Investment Deals of 2024: Avalanche, Monad, & More

2024 has seen a flurry of crypto venture capital (VC) investment amid a raging bull market that has seen Bitcoin (BTC) prices soar to new peaks of over $100,000.

Private crypto fundraising activity has made a comeback from the nadirs of 2023 as top crypto venture capital firms invested in a variety of sectors ranging from decentralized social to restaking protocols and layer one (L1) blockchains to modular blockchain solutions in 2024.

Who are the crypto VC funding winners so far this year? In this article, we list the top 10 crypto venture capital investments in 2024.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top 10 Crypto Venture Capital Deals of 2024
3. The Bottom Line
4. FAQs

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top 10 Crypto Venture Capital Deals of 2024
3. The Bottom Line
Show Full Guide
4. FAQs

Top 10 Crypto Venture Capital Deals of 2024

1. Avalanche – $250 Million

In December 2024, L1 blockchain Avalanche announced that it raised $250 million in locked-token sales to over 40 crypto hedge funds and venture capital firms. The investment round was led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital.

The capital raise coincided with the testnet launch of Avalanche9000 – the largest network upgrade on Avalanche to date. The upgrade is expected to make Avalanche more suitable for institutions to build regulatory compliant crypto offerings.

At the time of writing, Avalanche’s AVAX token was the 11th most valuable crypto in the world with a market cap of over $20 billion, CoinMarketCap data showed.

Avalanche announces a $250 million private locked-token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital, highlighting the growing confidence in Avalanche’s blockchain ecosystem ahead of the Avalanche9000 upgrade 🤝https://t.co/tWmn5u9LbG

— Avalanche9000 🔺 (@avax) December 12, 2024

2. Monad Labs – $225 Million

In early April 2024, Monad Labs announced that it raised $225 million in a funding round led by crypto VC firm Paradigm. Electric Capital, Wintermute Ventures, and Animoca Ventures were among several other crypto venture capital firms involved in the deal.

Monad Labs is developing an L1 blockchain called Monad to challenge the dominance of Ethereum (ETH). Monad L1 is unique in its designs as it breaks away from Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap – a dominant trend in the industry – to create a standalone L1 that combines the best of Ethereum and Solana (SOL).

Monad L1 is an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible chain, allowing it to take advantage of EVM’s global popularity and battle-tested nature. Additionally, Monad L1 has a parallel execution system like Solana that allows it to execute several transactions at the same time.

Monad Labs is excited to announce a $225M fundraise, led by @paradigm pic.twitter.com/cRchQd506k

— Monad ⨀ (@monad_xyz) April 9, 2024

3. Blockstream – $210 Million

Blockstream is a Bitcoin and blockchain infrastructure company. The firm developed Bitcoin’s first sidechain called The Liquid Network in 2018.

In October 2024, Blockstream announced that it had closed a $210 million convertible note financing round led by Fulgur Ventures. The company added that the funds will be used to develop its layer two (L2) technologies, expand its Bitcoin mining operations and grow its Bitcoin treasury.

According to data firm Tracxn, Blockstream has raised over $651 million in eight funding rounds.

Blockstream has closed a $210M convertible note financing round led by @FulgurVentures, driving our mission to bring Bitcoin into global finance.

This capital accelerates layer-2 development, expands mining ahead of the next Bitcoin cycle, and grows one of the world’s largest… pic.twitter.com/gi1ov0LCYU

— Blockstream (@Blockstream) October 15, 2024

4. Merkle Manufactory – $139 Million

In late March 2024, Bloomberg reported that Merkle Manufactory – the company behind the decentralized social network Farcaster – raised a new funding round with Paradigm as the lead investor.

According to Bloomberg, the deal will see Merkle Manufactory valued at over $1 billion. Although the fundraising has not been officially announced by Merkle Manufactory, co-founder Dan Romero confirmed that the company was “closing a new round of financing.” Traxn later confirmed that Merkle Manufactory raised $139 million in its latest funding round.

Farcaster is an Optimism (OP)-based protocol that hosts decentralized social networking applications.

Farcaster has been a huge hit within the crypto community, scaling from 5,000+ daily users in 2023 to over 50,000+ daily users by April 2024.

5. Eigen Labs – $100 Million

In February 2024, Eigen Labs announced that crypto VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) invested $100 million in the company.

Eigen Labs is developing an Ethereum restaking protocol called EigenLayer and a data availability solution called EigenDA.

EigenLayer introduced restaking on Ethereum, where ETH stakers can restake their liquid staking tokens (LST) like stETH and rETH on EigenLayer.

As of December 18, 2024, EigenLayer had amassed the third-highest total locked value (TVL) among all decentralized applications (dApps) at over $18 billion. Only staking platform Lido and lending protocol Aave had a higher TVL than EigenLayer at the time of writing, according to DeFiLlama.

Accelerating Ethereum Together: @eigenlayer ♾ @a16zcrypto

We are excited to announce that Eigen Labs, the core development team contributing to EigenLayer and @eigen_da, has raised $100 million from a16z crypto.https://t.co/M2JQ8HZZ0h

— EigenLayer (@eigenlayer) February 22, 2024

6. Berachain – $100 Million

In April 2024, a Cosmos-based Ethereum-compatible L1 chain called Berachain raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures. Other notable crypto VC investors were Polychain Capital and Hashkey Capital, among others.

Berachain started as an NFT project called Bong Bears in August 2021. The project pivoted to launch an L1 chain in 2022.

According to its pseudonymous co-founder Smokey the Bera, the Berachain L1 will use a variant of delegated proof-of-stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism called Proof of Liquidity (PoL). In PoL, the only way to earn Berachain’s staking token, called BFT, is by providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges and lending protocols on the chain.

According to Crunchbase, the latest funding round values Berachain at $1.5 billion.

We're thrilled to announce our $100M Series B round, co-led by @BHDigitalAssets and @hiFramework pic.twitter.com/yyDKmpBN7u

— Berachain 🐻⛓ (@berachain) April 12, 2024

7. Celestia Foundation – $100 Million

Celestia Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports the development of modular data availability network Celestia. The foundation also funds research and development projects and open-source public goods.

In September 2024, Celestia Foundation raised $100 million from Bain Capital Crypto, Syncracy Capital, 1kx, Robot Ventures, and Placeholder. The latest funding round took the total amount raised to $155 million.

Since Celestia’s main net went live in October 2023, the blockchain network has onboarded over 20 rollup chains to use its data availability solutions.

Celestia’s TIA has become the 52nd most valuable crypto in the world, with a market cap of over $3 billion as of December 2024.

Celestia underneath 🦣 https://t.co/8oV1YsXEiX

— Celestia 🦣 (@celestia) December 10, 2024

8. Sentient – $85 million

Sentient is an artificial intelligence (AI) research organization that builds platforms and protocols to enable open-source AI developers to monetize their models. The company will build its AI platform using the Polygon (POL) AggLayer.

In July 2024, Sentient announced that it raised about $85 million in a seed funding round co-led by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures.

According to Coindesk, Sentient will use the fund to develop its platform and attract talent for its AI and blockchain engineering teams.

9. Story Protocol – $80 Million

In August 2024, intellectual property (IP) tokenization platform Story Protocol raised $80 million in a Series B funding round led by a16z.

Story Protocol is a purpose-built L1 blockchain for tokenized IP. It aims to modernize the legal procedure around IP usage by creating a repository system to easily manage and monetize IP.

The project came into the spotlight in 2023 when it raised about $54 million from a16z. Notable investors such as Balaji Srinivasan, Sanghun Kim, and Roham Gharegozlou also participated in the funding round.

To date, Story has raised about $140 million. The company is reportedly valued at about $2.5 billion.

(9/n) Our co-founders are:@storysylee , who founded @radish_fiction, a serial fiction app & sold to Kakao@JasonLLevy who led Content @Episode, a top storytelling ecosystem for mobile@jasonjzhao who managed product @DeepMind, transforming AI research into impactful products pic.twitter.com/IurKs3gCtm

— Story (꧁IP꧂) (@StoryProtocol) September 6, 2023

10. Freechat – $80 Million

In January 2024, Hong Kong-based Freechat raised $80 million in a Series A funding round. The names of the investors were not disclosed.

Freechat is a blockchain-powered social platform that offers users control over their data and a censorship-free platform.

An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm called Freechat AI is among its key features, and it uses machine learning (ML) for content recommendation and personalized user experience. Freechat has a native token called FCC.

The Bottom Line

It is inspiring to see crypto VC activity bounce back in 2024. Not so long ago, the industry saw crypto venture funding drop to a near three-year low in the third quarter of 2023.

Looking forward, the growing popularity of decentralized social, restaking protocol, AI, and ZK technology are expected to drive crypto venture capital in 2025.

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