How 2022 Saw Billions Invested in Crypto Infrastructure And Why It’s Important Today

Lattice Fund analyzed over 1,200 publicly traded crypto pre-seed and seed rounds since 2022 and found that in the seed-stage crypto market, investors are looking for more stable infrastructure and centralized finance (CeFi). We have found a renewed focus on established sectors.

This comes after a period of exploration into emerging sectors in 2021.

Infrastructure and CeFi

According to the latest information report With funding from venture capital firm Lattice Funds, this new focus resulted in nearly $2 billion and $450 million being committed to these sectors, a 3x and 2x increase year over year.

This change is driven by “strong investor confidence,” with 80% of CeFi projects and 78% of infrastructure projects successfully launching on mainnet, far outpacing sectors such as consumer Web3 and DeFi. is proven.

As new areas such as NFTs and the Metaverse began to lose momentum, infrastructure projects that primarily catered to other cryptocurrency companies remained a consistent bet for long-term growth. For example, Eigenlayer raised a seed round in January 2022, successfully expanding its AVS go-to-market strategy and attracting interest from middleware projects.

Overall, investors poured $5 billion into nearly 1,200 startups from the 2022 batch, reflecting a 2.5x increase year-over-year.

Ethereum continues to solidify its position as a dominant layer 1 ecosystem in 2022, attracting $1.4 billion in investment, significantly outpacing competing networks like Solana, which has raised nearly $350 million.

While Ethereum and Solana projects have had similar success in securing follow-on funding, other ecosystems have struggled. For example, the Polkadot ecosystem saw a significant 40% drop in funding, and no team in the NEAR ecosystem was able to raise additional funding.

Meanwhile, Binance’s ecosystem faced high attrition rates, with one-third of its team no longer working. Solana’s failure rate has doubled to 26% since 2021.

Despite these challenges, the Bitcoin project has maintained remarkable resilience, with 100% of the team still active two years later, demonstrating its enduring stability amid volatile markets. It is emphasized.

NFTs and the Metaverse lose momentum

As interest in retail declines, attracting users has become increasingly difficult in a bear market. Sectors that stood out in the 2022 wave, such as NFTs, Metaverse, and gaming, are struggling to maintain user engagement compared to two years ago.

The report also said that the sectors that dominate the narrative today do not necessarily align with long-term investor interests.

Despite 75 teams raising approximately $280 million, no project in Metaverse achieved product-market fit, and more than 21% of teams ceased operations.

Meanwhile, sectors such as DePIN and AI, which received little attention in 2022, have emerged as some of the hottest topics today.