Blockworks, the New York-based crypto knowledge and investor relations platform, has acquired rival Messari in a deal that underscores the rising consolidation strain reshaping the digital asset business — and the steep valuation resets going through as soon as high-flying crypto startups.
The acquisition brings collectively two of the business’s largest crypto info companies. Messari, based in 2018, constructed a complete knowledge platform protecting greater than 40,000 digital property, together with APIs, market intelligence, analysis instruments, and AI-powered workflows utilized by funds, exchanges, regulators, and builders.
Blockworks, additionally based in 2018, has centered on the issuer facet of crypto capital markets, providing standardized disclosures by means of its Token Transparency Framework and a full-stack investor relations platform for onchain property.
Blockworks paid greater than $10 million for Messari — a steep low cost from Messari’s roughly $300 million valuation when it raised a $35 million Sequence B led by Brevan Howard’s crypto arm in 2022, with Point72 Ventures additionally amongst its backers, in keeping with the Wall Road Journal.
The markdown displays each Messari’s current difficulties — together with the 2024 departure of co-founder and longtime CEO Ryan Selkis and subsequent workers reductions — and broader headwinds gripping the crypto sector.
“This acquisition connects the 2 sides of the market,” stated Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks. “Issuers keep a trusted document of their enterprise, and traders, exchanges, and regulators devour that document by means of analysis, APIs, and automatic workflows.”
Blockworks elevate to consolidate fragmented crypto knowledge market
The deal was funded partially by means of Blockworks’ not too long ago closed Sequence A extension, which valued the corporate at $192 million. That spherical was co-led by ParaFi and Reciprocal Ventures and included participation from Coinbase Ventures, amongst others.
Blockworks stated it raised capital particularly to consolidate crypto’s fragmented knowledge and data market, drawing comparisons to how Wall Road’s info layer finally coalesced round dominant platforms like Bloomberg, FactSet, and S&P International.
Messari CEO Diran Li, who took over following Selkis’s departure and had been repositioning the agency as an “AI-first firm,” will be part of Blockworks as a senior chief beneath co-founders Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito.
The deal arrives as crypto M&A exercise stays elevated regardless of difficult market situations. Crypto firms have accomplished 144 offers totaling $11.8 billion in transaction worth to date in 2026 — up roughly 3.5% from the identical interval final yr — in keeping with knowledge from advisory agency Architect Companions.
Nonetheless, Eric Risley, founding father of Architect Companions, warned that sustained strain on buying and selling volumes and token costs might pressure extra distressed gross sales. “We’re within the midst of the creation of the haves and the have-nots,” Risley stated, per WSJ.
Each Blockworks and Messari executives stated the mixed platform would prioritize deeper knowledge protection, stronger APIs, enhanced compliance workflows, and AI-native analysis instruments as digital property more and more migrate onchain.
