Compiled by: Biscuit & Elvin, RootData
In January 2025, BTC reached a new high of $109,000, and the overall market remained in a high-level fluctuation between $92,000 and $105,000. The election of former President Trump and the launch of the TRUMP token generated a lot of hype, while the emergence of DeepSeek may lead to a significant correction in AI-related tokens, and the market liquidity is not optimistic.
The total financing amount in the crypto sector reached $748 million in January, almost the same as the previous month. The total number of financing events was 80, a decrease of 25.2% month-on-month, which is the second-lowest in the past two years, only second to 79 events in August 2023. The average financing amount this month was $11.905 million, and the median financing amount was $5 million.
I. Financing Data
This month, there were 3 financing events over $100 million, and 25 financing events over $10 million, with the largest being the acquisition of the Web3 payment platform Helio by the crypto payment infrastructure MoonPay for $175 million. Other popular projects that completed financing include the Solana wallet Phantom completing a Series C round led by Paradigm and Sequoia Capital, Chainalysis acquiring the Web3 security platform Alterya, and the institutional-grade digital asset custodian Komainu completing a Series B round.
In terms of financing amount and round, the $1-3 million range is the most common financing interval, and seed round is the most popular financing stage, but the proportion has decreased, with 19 projects completing seed rounds. Well-known projects include the payment network 1Money Network ($20 million), the Layer 1 primitive Pod Network incubated by Common Prefix ($10 million), the open-source economic infrastructure Merit Systems ($10 million), and the Cosmos cross-chain ecosystem wallet Keplr.
II. Active Investors
Animoca Brands has topped the list of most active venture capital firms for three consecutive months, with 5, 8, and 5 investments respectively in the past 3 months. Their investment portfolio includes the Sui liquid staking protocol Haedal, the Layer 2 scaling solution zkCandy, the life simulation game BeraTone on the Berachain, the digital advertising platform EarnOS, and the TON lending protocol Evaa Protocol.
Closely following are 1kx, Mysten Labs, and Flow Traders, each with 4 investments. Additionally, Sergey Gorbunov, Kain Warwick, and Rushi Manche are the most active Web3 angel investors, each investing in at least 2 projects.
In addition to the cooling of the investment and financing market, crypto VCs are also sending out relatively negative signals in fundraising data. On January 27, MicroStrategy filed a Form S-3 mixed securities shelf registration statement with the US SEC. The company plans to issue various securities, including debt securities, Class A common stock, preferred stock, depositary receipts, warrants, and mixed securities units. The funds raised will be mainly used to purchase more Bitcoin and for general corporate purposes.
III. Popular Projects
The RootData heat index is calculated by normalizing and weighting data such as platform search volume, click-through rate, user votes, and Twitter heat index. The projects with the highest heat index in December are:
Solv is a decentralized Bitcoin staking protocol that unlocks the full potential of Bitcoin assets through its liquidity consensus infrastructure. By addressing the fragmentation, yield opportunities, and custody solutions of BTC assets, Solv provides a gateway for Bitcoin holders to the BTCFi world and continuously establishes paths and confidence for traditional funds to enter the crypto space.
Artela Network is a high-performance EVM++ Layer 1 blockchain built for AI Agents. Artela's full-stack AI introduces advanced tools to support the creation of autonomous AI Agents and smart applications, with native support for on-chain LLMs and key features like verifiability, privacy protection, interoperability, and customizable user policies.
Nodepay is a decentralized network infrastructure that provides bandwidth for AI training. By connecting to the Nodepay network, users will be able to sell their unused internet to AI companies, enabling efficient transfer of public training data, labels, models, and remote distributed training.
Plume is a fully integrated modular chain focused on RWAfi. They have built the first modular, composable RWA-centric EVM-compatible chain, aiming to simplify onboarding of all asset types through native infrastructure and unified RWAfi-specific functionality across the entire chain, and simplify capital onboarding.
Official Trump is a Meme token issued on the Solana mainnet, introduced by the former US President Trump on social media.
Hyperspace is an open standard protocol designed for distributed model inference, aiming to fuse the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) with the latest user data to create a novel intelligence service that is real-time, socially aware, and freely accessible at scale.
SoSoValue is a one-stop financial research platform for crypto investors, providing investors with real, high-quality macroeconomic insights to assist in more effective investment research. It also provides an AI-based categorization system for news and research, and connects macroeconomic data with the crypto market.
GoPlus Network is a Web3 modular user security layer. It can seamlessly integrate with any blockchain or project, providing comprehensive protection throughout the entire user transaction lifecycle. GoPlus utilizes AVS and cutting-edge AI security solutions to perform comprehensive risk analysis and provide smart, efficient, and decentralized security services for users.
DuckChain is defined as the Telegram AI Chain, a blockchain platform designed specifically for the Telegram ecosystem. It combines AI-driven tools with EVM technology to serve Telegram's global user base of over 1 billion.
Mango Network is a Layer1 public chain with a Multi-VM full-chain infrastructure, primarily solving the problems of user experience fragmentation and liquidity fragmentation that exist in Web3 applications and DeFi protocols.
Sonic is a Layer-1 platform with an Ethereum security gateway, providing the fastest settlement layer for digital assets, with a TPS exceeding 10,000 and a transaction confirmation time of one second.
Solayer is building infiniSVM to scale Solana, which is a hardware-accelerated SVM with a multi-execution cluster architecture connected by SDN and RDMA, allowing infinite scalability while maintaining atomic state at 100 Gbps.
Mind Network is an "HTTPZ" infrastructure using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to usher Web3 into a new era of quantum resistance and end-to-end encryption. Mind Network provides unique solutions for data sovereignty protection, fair consensus, private voting, secure cross-chain transmission, and trusted AI.
Sentient is building community-contributed open-source AI models, aiming to compete directly with OpenAI. Sentient will launch campaigns for contributors, each with specific metrics used to evaluate contributions and provide rewards.
OpenLedger is building a permissionless, data-centric infrastructure for AI development.
Limitus is a decentralized, AI-driven consumer platform. Its unique feature is its emerging intelligence and the ability to directly connect with users' devices, transforming them into autonomous agents acting on behalf of the users. Unlike traditional tools that rely on static rules and strict processes, Limitus can operate autonomously.
FLock aims to build a decentralized privacy-preserving solution for AI. FLock proposes a research initiative called Federated Learning Blocks (FLocks), which uses the blockchain as a coordination platform for data holders to conduct machine learning, while keeping the data local and private.
Chainbase is a full-chain data network. Its core mission is to provide a transparent, reliable, and permissionless data layer for the AI era. Through its modular design, it supports cross-chain data interoperability and programmability, making it easy to build and use data models.
The BIO Protocol is the financial layer of DeSci, aiming to accelerate the flow of capital and talent into on-chain science. bioDAOs can use the BIO Protocol's auction contracts to raise funds and directly apply them to research projects, IP assets, and other biotechnology organizations.
Metya is an AI-driven Web3 dating platform, aiming to revolutionize the dating experience. By combining cutting-edge technology and user-centric features, Metya creates a secure and enriching environment for modern relationships, making every encounter full of possibilities.
SOON is a rollup stack aiming to provide top-tier performance for all Layer 1 blockchains, supported by a Decoupled SVM and a configurable DA layer.
ai16z is an AI-powered venture fund that simulates the investment decisions of a16z partner Marc Andreessen using AI models, and makes investments based on the recommendations of DAO members, with the weight of the recommendations depending on the members' token holdings and the historical success rate of their recommendations.
Story Protocol is building web3 technology to fundamentally change the way narratives are created. Its mission is to unleash a new way to create, manage, and license on-chain IP, ultimately forming an ecosystem of "story Lego bricks" that can be remixed and recombined. Story Protocol provides a simplified framework to manage the entire lifecycle of IP development, supporting features like provenance tracking, frictionless licensing, and revenue sharing. Applications built on Story Protocol are designed for creators of all media (prose, images, games, audio, etc.), empowering writers and artists to track the provenance of their work, allow anyone to contribute and remix, while capturing the value of their contributions.
Project Dynamics
In January, RootData also recorded many project events such as mainnet launches and new token issuances, helping users understand important project dynamics in the market and capture earlier alpha opportunities.
Additionally, RootData has launched a token unlock feature, helping users improve the efficiency of capturing investment signals by combining the "Trending" list and comprehensive token unlock information with structured primary and secondary market data for projects.
Due to the limited space, the above is only a partial mainnet and token information. For more complete and up-to-date data information, please visit the RootData official website (https://www.rootdata.com/zh/) to check and learn.
