Overview of CB Insights' 2022 Blockchain 50 list, with 31 companies valued at over $1 billion
What are the leading companies in the blockchain industry?Organizer: Gu Yu, Chain Catcher
In early March, the globally renowned market research and analysis firm CB Insights released the 2022 Blockchain 50 list, ranking the 50 most promising blockchain and crypto companies worldwide annually. This year's winners include blockchain infrastructure providers, cryptocurrency exchanges, custody and wallet services, NFT marketplaces, and more.
The selection criteria for the list include data submitted by companies, business models, market momentum, and CB Insights' proprietary Mosaic score, filtering from over 3,000 companies.
Highlights of this year's list include:
Unicorns: 31 of the 50 companies (62%) have a valuation of $1 billion or more in their most recent funding round.
Funding Trends: These 50 companies raised $13.2 billion in equity financing through 83 deals (excluding token sales) in 2021.
Round Trends: 18% (9) of the 2022 Blockchain 50 are early-stage startups, with their latest funding round being incubator/accelerator, angel, seed, or Series A funding. 58% (29) are mid-stage (Series B or C) companies, 16% (8) are late-stage (Series D+ or minority equity), and 8% (4) are in the last round of unallocated funding.
Global Representation: This year's winners come from 15 countries, with 44% of the companies located outside the United States. After the U.S. (28 companies), the U.K. is home to the second-largest number of Blockchain 50 companies (5), followed by Canada, France, Singapore, and Switzerland (2 each).
Category Distribution: By the number of winners, the most represented blockchain category is infrastructure and development, with 8 companies (16%). This is followed by exchanges with 7 companies (14%), and then custody and wallet services, as well as NFTs and gaming, both with 6 companies (12%).
Top Investors: Coinbase Ventures is the most active investor in this year's Blockchain 50, investing in 16 of the 50 companies. A16z ranks second with 14 companies, followed closely by Paradigm with 13 companies.
Best Deals of 2021: Both FTX and NYDIG raised $1 billion in funding in 2021.
Most Funded: FTX is the most well-funded company on the Blockchain 50 list, having raised approximately $1.8 billion in public funding over 8 rounds since 2019.
Here is the detailed list of the Blockchain 50 (sorted alphabetically):
Aave is a decentralized lending protocol that allows users to deposit and earn interest as well as collateralize assets to obtain loans, making it one of the most influential DeFi applications today.
Related Reading: "A Comprehensive Analysis of DeFi Lending Leader Aave: Business Model, Token Economics, and Investment Logic"
Abra is a mobile wallet and payment company that supports Bitcoin, providing a global peer-to-peer cash transfer application. Abra enables users to store digital cash on their smartphones and send it to other Abra users or merchants anywhere in the world.
Alchemy is a developer platform that enables companies to build scalable and reliable decentralized applications without managing blockchain infrastructure in-house. Alchemy provides developers with the essential building blocks needed to create the technological future.
Related Reading: "Breaking Down Web3 Infrastructure Company Alchemy: Development History and Business Model"
Amber Group is a diversified crypto finance company based in Hong Kong, helping clients buy and sell cryptocurrency products, earn yields, manage risks, and obtain liquidity.
Anchorage is a digital asset custodian that aims to provide the benefits of security and asset accessibility, including earning yields from staking, voting, and fast transactions.
Related Reading: "What Makes Anchorage the First Equity Investment Target of Private Equity Giant KKR in the Crypto Space?"
Ava Labs developed Avalanche, an open-source blockchain platform for launching decentralized finance applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in an interoperable and highly scalable ecosystem.
Related Reading: "Detailed Explanation of Avalanche's Technical Features, Consensus Mechanism, and Ecological Development Status"
Axoni focuses on blockchain solutions for the capital markets industry, providing blockchain infrastructure, distributed application development, and workflow automation tools. Clients include large financial institutions and capital market infrastructure companies.
Binance, founded in 2017, is currently the most influential and highest-volume cryptocurrency exchange.
Bitpanda is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Austria, with a latest funding round valuation of $4.1 billion.
Related Reading: "The Exchange Sector Welcomes Huge Capital Influx Again, Bitpanda Completes $263 Million Financing at a $4.1 Billion Valuation"
Bitso is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Mexico, with a latest funding round valuation of $2.2 billion.
Founded in 2011, Blockchain.com primarily offers services including a block explorer, cryptocurrency wallet, and exchange, while also providing a range of solutions for institutions, including asset custody and lending.
Blockdaemon is a blockchain deployment facilitator that commoditizes private blockchain setups so that enterprises can focus on developing large-scale distributed systems.
Founded in 2017, BlockFi has long provided lending services to the crypto market, while also offering cryptocurrency trading execution services for retail and institutional clients, as well as customized credit and structured products for institutional clients, including hedge funds/family offices, market makers/OTC trading platforms, crypto companies, and high-net-worth individuals.
Related Reading: "BlockFi's Latest Financing Supported by Bain Capital, Tiger Global, and Others, Valuation Increased Eightfold in Seven Months"
Celo is a public blockchain platform founded in 2017, aiming to bring the benefits of DeFi to anyone with a mobile phone through a mobile-first platform.
Related Reading: "Can the Honor Student Celo Replicate Terra's Rise?"
Celsius Network is a cryptocurrency lending platform that allows consumers to earn interest on their crypto assets and borrow against them, with a latest valuation of $3.5 billion.
CertiK is a blockchain and smart contract auditing company that ensures smart contracts can be deployed and used safely.
Chainalysis is a blockchain analysis company that provides compliance and investigation software to banks, enterprises, and governments worldwide.
CoinSwitch is a cryptocurrency exchange based in India, with a latest valuation of $1.9 billion.
Consensys is an Ethereum infrastructure development company that builds a consumer-centric ecosystem of products and enterprise solutions using blockchain technology (primarily Ethereum), with a latest valuation of $3.2 billion.
Related Reading: "The Driving Force Behind Ethereum: What Does ConsenSys and Its Founder Joseph Lubin Aim to Achieve?"
Copper is a digital asset custodian whose infrastructure enables institutions to acquire, store, and trade digital assets, while its multi-signature protection application ensures that institutions can be fully confident that their funds are not at risk of theft.
Founded in February 2018, Dapper Labs is a blockchain game developer aiming to bring the advantages of decentralization to 1 billion consumers through the power of gaming. Dapper Labs is known for creating the NBA Top Shots NFT collectible project and is also the developer of well-known games like Cryptokitties. It officially launched the Flow blockchain earlier this year, with a current valuation of $7.6 billion.
Related Reading: "$2 Billion? Understanding the Logic Behind Flow and Dapper Labs' High Valuation"
Digital Asset provides tools for tracking and settling digital assets and mainstream financial assets using distributed ledgers in a secure environment. The company's platform is designed to minimize counterparty risk and shorten settlement times.
Dune Analytics is a web-based tool based in Norway that allows users to view and create charts depicting activities on the Ethereum blockchain.
Related Reading: "Essential Tool for DeFi and NFT Analysis, What Highlights Does Dune Analytics Offer?"
Elliptic provides cryptocurrency monitoring services for law enforcement and companies, aiming to make cryptocurrency transaction activities more transparent and accountable. The company uses artificial intelligence to explore suspicious transactions and activity patterns in cryptocurrency networks, allowing users to detect abnormal transactions and trace their origins.
FalconX developed a digital asset trading platform that offers a platform, API, and full-service trading desk, with a latest valuation of $3.75 billion.
Figment is a blockchain infrastructure and crypto staking provider based in Canada. Figment develops backend systems and infrastructure to provide token yields for PoS blockchains.
Founded in 2018, Fireblocks provides secure infrastructure for transferring, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks helps exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds securely scale their digital asset operations through the Fireblocks network and MPC-based wallet infrastructure, with a latest valuation of $8 billion.
Forte Labs is a blockchain gaming company aiming to upgrade the gaming industry through accessible blockchain technology, benefiting players and developers.
Founded in May 2019, FTX has long been among the top five cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, offering products that cover spot trading, derivatives trading, leveraged tokens, prediction markets, stock tokens, and more, with a latest funding round valuation reaching $25 billion.
Related Reading: "Dancing with Sharks: The Growth Story of Giant FTX"
Gemini is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2015 that allows customers to buy, sell, store, and earn digital assets, with a latest valuation of $7.1 billion.
Index Coop is an on-chain crypto index fund builder responsible for creating crypto index products such as the DeFi Pulse Index, Metaverse Index, and leveraged index products like ETH2x-FLI.
Ledger builds secure solutions for cryptocurrencies and blockchain using cryptographic chip technology. The company builds hardware wallets for consumers, hardware security modules for enterprises, and hardware oracles for the IoT world.
Matrixport was spun off from Bitmain in 2019 and is headquartered in Singapore, managing approximately $10 billion in assets and offering a diverse range of crypto financial services, including trading, lending, and fixed-income products, with a latest valuation of $1.1 billion.
Related Reading: "Crypto Financial Services Platform Matrixport Completes $100 Million Financing, Plans to Go Public in 3-5 Years"
MoonPay is a fintech company that builds payment infrastructure for cryptocurrencies, providing a seamless experience for converting between fiat and cryptocurrencies using all major payment methods.
Mythical Games is a video game developer creating a series of PC, mobile, and console games on the EOSIO blockchain, allowing developers to build games with player-owned economies.
Nansen is an Ethereum data provider that analyzes millions of data points on Ethereum wallets, transactions, and smart contracts, helping to distinguish signals from noise in blockchain data.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York, NYDIG primarily provides comprehensive, institutional-grade Bitcoin solutions for traditional financial companies, including purchasing, custody, and trading Bitcoin, with a latest funding round valuation exceeding $7 billion.
Related Reading: "Creating a $1 Billion Record in the Crypto Industry, What Kind of Company is NYDIG?"
OpenSea is an NFT trading platform where anyone can buy and sell crypto goods through smart contracts, with a latest valuation reaching $13.3 billion.
Related Reading: "OpenSea: The eBay of NFTs, What Are Its Moats and Future After Monthly Trading Volume of $3 Billion?"
Founded in 2013, Paxos is a digital asset trust company based in New York. In 2018, the company launched the Paxos Standard stablecoin (PAX), which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. As a licensed qualified custodian, the law allows the company to hold digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as gold, on behalf of institutional investors.
Prime Trust is a blockchain-driven trust company that provides solutions for the custody of cryptocurrencies, as well as various compliance solutions.
R3 is an enterprise blockchain software company that collaborates with participants from multiple industries in both the private and public sectors to develop on its open-source blockchain platform Corda and the enterprise version Corda Enterprise.
SEBA Bank provides cryptocurrency services for companies and investors while extending traditional banking services to corporations.
Securitize provides solutions for creating compliant digital securities. The Securitize compliance platform and protocol offer a full-stack solution for issuing and managing digital securities (security tokens).
Sky Mavis develops blockchain-based games and products. Its first game, Axie Infinity, is a digital pet world where players can battle, breed, and trade cute creatures called Axies, and is currently one of the most influential blockchain games.
Related Reading: "How Did Axie Infinity's Founder Trung Nguyen Create a Game with Over 2.6 Million Daily Active Users?"
Solana Labs is the technology development company behind the high-performance public blockchain Solana, driving Solana to become one of the hottest public blockchains this year.
Related Reading: "Full Text of Grayscale's Solana Research Report: Practical Applications, Advantages, and Challenges"
Founded in 2019, Sorare is a blockchain-based football gaming platform that represents football stars through NFTs, allowing players to purchase NFT virtual football player cards certified by football clubs or leagues on Sorare's platform, build teams, and participate in various football competitions, reshaping the way football fans interact. The company is currently valued at $4.3 billion.
StarkWare is developing zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology, headquartered in Israel, aimed at providing solutions for load issues and privacy in blockchain, with a latest valuation of $2 billion.
Related Reading: "In-Depth Study of StarkWare: Technical Roadmap, Development History, and Current Status"
TaxBit is a cryptocurrency tax software platform and accounting company that achieves widespread adoption through real-time tax automation, support, and compliance, with a latest valuation of $1.5 billion.
Uniswap developed a decentralized exchange protocol that allows any user with an internet connection, a Metamask wallet, and some ETH (or ERC20 tokens) to exchange assets in a permissionless manner.
Related Reading: "Uniswap: $5 Billion Valuation, 11 Employees"
Wirex is a hybrid personal banking solution that combines the speed and flexibility of blockchain finance with acceptance of traditional currencies, all integrated into one account. Wirex offers a secure Bitcoin wallet linked to Visa and MasterCard debit cards, supported by online and mobile applications.
