Blockworks, the New York-based crypto information and investor relations platform, has acquired rival Messari in a deal that underscores the rising consolidation stress reshaping the digital asset business — and the steep valuation resets dealing with as soon as high-flying crypto startups.
The acquisition brings collectively two of the business’s largest crypto data companies. Messari, based in 2018, constructed a complete information platform overlaying greater than 40,000 digital belongings, 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 aspect of crypto capital markets, providing standardized disclosures by its Token Transparency Framework and a full-stack investor relations platform for onchain belongings.
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 Collection B led by Brevan Howard’s crypto arm in 2022, with Point72 Ventures additionally amongst its backers, in keeping with the Wall Avenue 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,” mentioned Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks. “Issuers preserve a trusted document of their enterprise, and traders, exchanges, and regulators devour that document by analysis, APIs, and automatic workflows.”
Blockworks increase to consolidate fragmented crypto information market
The deal was funded partly by Blockworks’ just lately closed Collection 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 mentioned it raised capital particularly to consolidate crypto’s fragmented information and data market, drawing comparisons to how Wall Avenue’s data layer finally coalesced round dominant platforms like Bloomberg, FactSet, and S&P World.
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 underneath 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 this point in 2026 — up roughly 3.5% from the identical interval final yr — in keeping with information from advisory agency Architect Companions.
Nonetheless, Eric Risley, founding father of Architect Companions, warned that sustained stress on buying and selling volumes and token costs may power extra distressed gross sales. “We’re within the midst of the creation of the haves and the have-nots,” Risley mentioned, per WSJ.
Each Blockworks and Messari executives mentioned the mixed platform would prioritize deeper information protection, stronger APIs, enhanced compliance workflows, and AI-native analysis instruments as digital belongings more and more migrate onchain.
