3億變1,000萬，Messari還是被賤賣了

Original Author: Maher, Foresight News

On June 12, Blockworks, a leading platform for crypto data and capital markets, announced the acquisition of its long-time rival, Messari, for a transaction value exceeding $10 million. Messari, which once reached a valuation of approximately $300 million in 2022, was acquired at a significant discount, highlighting the survival pressures faced by high-valuation startups and the ongoing consolidation wave in the data infrastructure sector during a prolonged bear market.

Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks, stated in the official announcement that "For eight years, Messari has provided the industry with transparency, market intelligence, and comprehensive data coverage for every crypto asset, building the industry's most comprehensive dataset. This merger will combine Blockworks' strengths in issuer disclosures, investor relations, and compliance workflows with Messari's advantages in data breadth and API capabilities, working together to build the 'single source of truth' for on-chain markets."

Transaction Details

According to Blockworks' official announcement and confirmation from multiple media outlets, Messari CEO Diran Li will join Blockworks in a senior leadership role upon the completion of the acquisition.

Diran Li

Messari's core assets, including its data platform and API, will be integrated into Blockworks' ecosystem. The API supports multi-dimensional data covering assets, markets, exchanges, news, research, stablecoins, protocols, networks, token unlocks, fundraising, social sentiment, event monitoring, and watchlists, and is already used by funds, exchanges, developers, and various market participants.

Blockworks stated that this transaction is its first major acquisition following the completion of its Series A extension financing several weeks ago. That funding round valued the company at approximately $192 million, co-led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, among others. The stated purpose of the funds was specifically to consolidate the fragmented data and information sectors within the crypto space.

Blockworks and Messari

Founded in 2018 by Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito, Blockworks is headquartered in New York. Initially centered around media and events—through podcasts like Empire, research reports, and in-person summits—it accumulated significant influence among crypto professionals and investors.

Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito

As the industry matured, the company gradually shifted from content creation to an on-chain capital markets intelligence platform, focusing on building institutional-grade data, investor relations, and compliance tools.

Around October 2025, Blockworks shut down its news division, redirecting resources to its data, investor relations, and compliance service segments. The Blockworks Intelligence business line became a key growth driver. The Series A extension financing completed in April was intended to fuel this transformation and fund subsequent acquisitions. Yanowitz publicly stated that the company's revenue was scaling rapidly, and the financing's clear goal was to "consolidate the fragmented crypto data and information space."

Blockworks' strength lies in its issuer-side capabilities: helping on-chain asset issuers (protocols, chains, foundations, applications, stablecoin and RWA issuers, prediction markets, etc.) establish standardized disclosure frameworks, investor relations processes, and compliance workflows. Its products serve institutions looking to enter on-chain markets, providing end-to-end support from due diligence to ongoing monitoring.

Messari, also founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, was established by Ryan Selkis and Dan McArdle. Initially focusing on professional-grade crypto research and data analysis, it quickly became the go-to platform for institutional and retail investors seeking reliable information.

Ryan Selkis

In September 2022, Messari completed a $35 million Series B funding round, led by Brevan Howard's crypto division with participation from Point72 Ventures, valuing the company at approximately $300 million. This funding occurred near the end of the bull market, reflecting strong demand for high-quality data infrastructure at the time. However, the enduring bear market post-2022 tightened crypto project fundraising and pressured trading volumes, presenting real challenges for Messari. In 2024, after co-founder and former CEO Ryan Selkis left, the company underwent workforce optimization. In the bear market environment, high-valuation data companies struggled to maintain previous growth expectations, increasing survival pressure.

Behind the Acquisition

According to data from Architect Partners, 144 mergers and acquisitions have occurred so far in 2026, totaling $11.8 billion, representing an approximately 3.5% increase year-over-year. Against the backdrop of pressured trading volumes and token prices, some high-valuation startups are opting for M&A to achieve resource consolidation or exits.

Eric Risley, founder of Architect Partners, noted that the industry is undergoing a differentiation process, and pressure may lead to more distressed sales. The disparity in Messari's valuation—from $300 million down to a transaction price of just over $10 million—is a microcosm of this phenomenon: early valuations based on growth narratives are being recalibrated against fundamentals and capital efficiency.

Yanowitz emphasized in the announcement: "This acquisition connects two sides of the market—issuers maintaining their business's credibility record, and investors, exchanges, and regulators consuming these records through research, APIs, and automated workflows." The core data foundation provided by Messari is precisely the prerequisite for AI agents to function: an agent's capabilities depend on the data it can access and the APIs it can call.

The crypto industry is currently at a critical inflection point: institutions are accelerating their on-chain activities, sectors like stablecoins, RWA, and prediction markets are expanding continuously, leading to a surge in demand for standardized disclosures, compliance monitoring, real-time data, and programmable access. In traditional financial markets, platforms like Bloomberg, FactSet, and S&P Global have built data moats through long-term consolidation; the crypto space similarly requires such infrastructure, but must be adapted to the nature of native, real-time, structured on-chain data.

Leveraging Messari's vast dataset and combining it with its own issuer-side disclosure and IR capabilities, Blockworks is forming a complete closed loop covering data collection, verification, analysis, distribution, and compliance. The introduction of AI will further accelerate this process, as high-quality, structured data is the core fuel for training and running on-chain agents. For the Messari team, joining a platform with greater resources and strategic clarity will allow its data assets to generate value within a larger ecosystem, rather than continuing to contract under the pressures of independent operations.

The crypto data and research space is moving from a state of blossoming diversity to a phase of survival-of-the-fittest consolidation. In the midst of cyclical fluctuations, data and trust represent long-term moats, and consolidation is often one of the optimal paths to navigate through market cycles.