Data: In 2024, venture capital has poured $5 billion into crypto startups

Source: cryptoslate

Compiled by: Blockchain Knight

According to data from DefiLlama, venture capital (VC) funds invested $527 million into crypto startups in July, a 14.5% year-on-year increase.

Last month, blockchain infrastructure projects raised $420.7 million, with startups accounting for the largest share—nearly 80% of the total amount.

The AI protocol Sentient secured $85 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, marking the most successful raise among blockchain infrastructure projects.

Blockchain payment network Partior raised a substantial $60 million from traditional banking giants JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered. As a result, just two of the 41 infrastructure-related funding rounds accounted for approximately 34% of the total funding amount.

DeFi protocols received $86 million in investments during July. The BTC restaking protocol Lombard raised $16 million, making it the largest single fundraising within the DeFi sector last month.

ZAP, a community-driven token distribution protocol built on Blast, raised $15 million from prominent crypto figures including Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins; Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon; and economist Alex Krüger.

Notably, the DeFi ecosystem of Layer-1 blockchain Monad attracted significant venture capital attention in July.

Kintsu and aPriori, two liquid staking protocols, raised $4 million and $10 million respectively. Additionally, Kuru secured $2 million to build a decentralized order book atop the Monad infrastructure.

Last month, the blockchain gaming ecosystem also received VC funding, closing out July with a total of $20.5 million raised.

Cambria, a Runescape-inspired game on the Blast network, received a $2.5 million investment from Bitkraft and 1kx.

In addition, Pantera Capital, the Mantle Ecosystem Fund, and other notable investors granted $18 million to NPCLabs, a protocol company building a blockchain ecosystem.

Compared to last year, venture capital interest in crypto assets has intensified this year. From January to July last year, crypto startups raised $4.22 billion from funds, while this year’s figure reached nearly $5 billion over the same period.