Gate Research Institute: March 2025 Web3 Industry Financing Report

Summary

• Based on Cryptorank data from April 2, 2025, the Web3 industry completed a total of 137 financing transactions in March 2025, with a cumulative amount of 5.07 billion dollars.
• Over 100 million USD in large financing totals 4.147 billion USD, accounting for as much as 81.79%; this indicates that capital is increasingly concentrating towards a few large transactions, and the market’s Matthew effect is becoming more pronounced.
• The CeFi track has an absolute advantage with a financing amount of 4 billion USD, far surpassing other tracks; the blockchain service track and social track follow closely with financing amounts of 342 million USD and 293 million USD, respectively.
• The market in March is still dominated by small and medium-sized financing, continuing the trend of “early diversified investment + concentrated bets on leading projects.” Financing rounds under $10 million account for nearly 70%, while projects with a single financing amount exceeding $50 million only account for 9.68%.
• The financing market in March presented an investment pattern of “broad layout + heavy bets”, with early rounds occupying the majority of financing projects, while A/B rounds attracted large amounts of capital, indicating a high recognition of mature projects by investors.
• a16z CSX ranked first with 10 investment projects, becoming the most active investment institution in March, focusing on blockchain services, public chains, and other tool-based applications and underlying technologies.

Financing Overview

According to Cryptorank data from April 2, 2025, the Web3 industry completed a total of 137 financing rounds in March 2025, with a cumulative amount reaching $5.07 billion.【1】

Compared to February 2025, the financing amount surged by 348.67% this month, but the number of financing deals slightly decreased by 5.52%. Compared to the same period last year, the financing amount increased by 302.38%, while the number of financing deals decreased by 21.71%.

Overall, the financing amount this month has reached a new high since April 2022, mainly due to the unprecedented large-scale financing and substantial merger and acquisition transactions. Among them, Abu Dhabi Investment Company MGX invested $2 billion in Binance, and Kraken acquired the US futures trading platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion. These two transactions account for a total of 69.03% of the total financing amount, becoming the core factors driving the surge in financing this month.

According to the data analysis of the TOP 10 financing projects in March 2025, we can observe the following characteristics of large financing projects this month: 【2】

• Mergers and Acquisitions Accelerate Market Consolidation: This month, mergers and acquisitions have become an important feature of the financing market. Among the TOP 10 financing projects, the merger cases of NinjaTrader and Napster have accumulated a total financing of 1.77 billion USD, accounting for 33.66% of the total financing amount in March. This trend reflects the market’s demand for resource integration and market share expansion, and helps to promote the maturity and development of the industry.
• Financing methods are becoming more flexible: MoonPay utilizes debt financing, while Walrus raises funds through private token sales. These represent different financing methods, indicating that the project parties are flexibly choosing the most suitable capital operation path based on their development stage and needs.
• Strategic Investment Drives Growth: Web3 projects are expanding their business and deepening market penetration through strategic investments and partnerships, such as funding from Binance BNB and the NCA (National Cryptocurrency Association). In addition to helping projects quickly establish market recognition and user bases, these investments also signify the accelerated entry of mainstream capital, boosting market confidence and promoting globalization and compliance processes.
• The popularity of mature Web3 projects continues to rise: The financing after the listings of Canaan and Metaplanet indicates that the market still maintains interest in mature Web3 projects, and investors are actively seeking established companies of a certain scale.

Overall, in March, the total amount of large financing over 100 million USD reached 4.147 billion USD, accounting for as much as 81.79%. If we exclude these large financings, the remaining financing events only totaled 923 million USD, indicating that capital is concentrating on a few large-scale transactions, and the market’s Matthew effect is becoming increasingly significant.

According to Cryptorank data, financing in March 2025 is mainly concentrated in CeFi, blockchain services, social sectors, and infrastructure. Among them, the financing amount in the social sector has significantly increased, which may indicate signs of a market rebound. The specific performance is as follows:

• CeFi and Blockchain Service Track Lead Financing: The CeFi track holds an absolute advantage with a financing amount of 4 billion USD, far surpassing other tracks, while the blockchain service follows closely with a financing amount of 342 million USD. The main reason for this is that traditional financial institutions are increasing their layout in cryptocurrency custody, compliant trading platforms, and derivative services (such as exchange mergers and bank-level asset management products), reflecting the market’s ongoing focus on centralized finance and blockchain services.
• Steady Growth in Infrastructure, Social Sector Indicates Signs of Recovery: The blockchain infrastructure sector has secured $246.8 million in funding, reflecting the market’s sustained optimism for underlying technological innovations, particularly in areas such as modular architecture and cross-chain interoperability, which remain favored by capital. The social sector ranks third with $293 million, emerging from a sluggish state at the beginning of the year — a significant increase compared to last month’s funding of only $8.5 million, suggesting that investor confidence in this area is gradually recovering.
• DeFi and GameFi Investment Enthusiasm Wanes: The DeFi sector has secured $93.08 million in funding, while the GameFi sector has received $69.05 million, reflecting a decrease in investor enthusiasm for blockchain gaming and DeFi innovations, possibly due to the current market still exploring sustainable profit models.
• Differentiation in the Application Layer Tracks: The social track ranks third with $293 million in funding, while the NFT track only received $5 million, continuing the sluggish trend since 2023. This trend indicates that the popularity of the NFT market has clearly declined, and capital is more inclined to invest in projects with practical application value. Besides PFP (Profile Picture) NFTs, the NFT track still needs to explore more innovative models with practical utility to attract market attention and financial support.

According to the data from 93 disclosed financing projects in March 2025, we can see that the market in March is still dominated by small and medium-sized financing, continuing the trend of “early-stage diversified investments + concentrated bets on leading projects.” Financing rounds below 10 million dollars account for nearly 70%, indicating that investors are more inclined to spread funds across early-stage projects to mitigate single risks. Among them, projects with financing amounts between 3 million to 10 million dollars are the most active, accounting for 36.56%, reflecting ongoing capital attention to growth-oriented projects.

In comparison, projects with single financing exceeding 50 million dollars only account for 9.68%, but their financing amount far exceeds that of small and medium-sized projects, indicating that capital tends to concentrate its bets on mature enterprises, supporting teams with commercialization capabilities and industry influence. For example, Walrus in the storage sector secured a single financing of 140 million dollars.

Based on the data from 71 disclosed financing rounds, in terms of the distribution of financing rounds, the Seed round leads with a share of 29.58%, followed closely by the Strategic round (28.17%) and the Pre-Seed round (19.72%). Together, these three account for 77.47% of the market share, constituting the primary rounds of investment activity.

The flow of funds showed different characteristics: the number of Series A financing projects accounted for only 14.08%, but the financing amount accounted for 33.73%, becoming the champion of gold absorption; The number of Series B financing projects accounted for 4.23%, but the financing amount accounted for 30.65%, and the average financing amount of a single project exceeded US$50 million, showing the high recognition of mature projects by capital. Although the number of projects in the seed round is the highest, the proportion of financing amount is lower than that of Series A and Series B, indicating that the investment logic in the Web3 space still favors large amounts of support for mature projects. The number of financing projects in the strategic round is relatively high, but the financing amount accounts for only 8.97%, which is relatively low, which may be related to the investment method and purpose of the round, such as strategic cooperation or ecological layout.

Overall, this month’s financing shows an investment pattern of “broad layout + heavy betting,” which not only maintains continuous support for seed-stage innovative projects but also demonstrates strong confidence from capital in projects with validated business models.

According to Cryptorank data as of April 2, 2025, a16z CSX ranks first with 10 investment projects, becoming the most active investment institution in March, focusing on blockchain services, public chains, and other tool applications and underlying technologies. Following closely are institutions such as XDC Foundation, Plug and Play, Robot Ventures, and Dragonfly Capital, which also demonstrated high investment activity.

From the perspective of track distribution, multiple institutions have laid out in the blockchain services (black) and DeFi (blue) areas, with some institutions also venturing into blockchain infrastructure, GameFi, Social, and CeFi tracks. Different investment institutions have varying strategies; some tend to broadly invest across multiple tracks, while others focus on specific areas, reflecting the diversified investment landscape in the Web3 domain.

Key Financing Projects to Focus on in March

Abound

Introduction: Abound is a remittance application that was spun off from Times Internet in 2023, primarily providing cross-border remittance services for Non-Resident Indians (NRI), focusing on the flow of funds between the US and India. Abound is committed to simplifying the cross-border remittance process through digitization, enhancing transaction speed and transparency.

On March 28, Abound completed a $14 million financing round, with investors including well-known institutions such as the NEAR Foundation and Circle Ventures. This round of financing will further help Abound establish a competitive advantage in the cross-border payment sector between the US and India. [3]

Investment Institutions: Well-known organizations such as the NEAR Foundation and Circle Ventures. In addition, Times Internet also participated in the investment.

Highlights:

1. Abound focuses on providing cross-border remittance services for Indian Americans in the U.S., leveraging new financing to expand its business scope, increase product offerings, and improve technological infrastructure.
2. The Abound plan explores ways for users to obtain high-yield savings, India-centric investments, and cross-border credit solutions. Its predecessor, Times Club, allowed users to remit money to India, earn rewards, and receive cash back on services such as sports live streaming, grocery shopping, and OTT subscriptions.

Walrus (WAL)

Introduction: The Sui ecosystem welcomes a heavyweight new member - the decentralized storage protocol Walrus (WAL), making a strong debut with a financing scale of 140 million USD and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of 2 billion USD. Walrus is a decentralized storage and data availability protocol designed to provide secure and efficient storage solutions for large files and unstructured data. It is developed by Sui’s development team Mysten Labs, built on the Sui blockchain, aiming to revolutionize data management in decentralized networks. The Walrus mainnet was officially launched on March 27.

On March 20, Walrus completed a $140 million financing round, with a current valuation of approximately $2 billion.

Investment Institutions: Standard Crypto leads the investment, with participation from a16z crypto and Electric Capital. Other investors include Comma3 Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Lvna Capital, Protagonist, Karatage, RW3 Ventures, and Raptor Group.

Highlights:

1. Utilizing Erasure Coding technology, the data is divided into smaller unit fragments and distributed across multiple storage nodes, ensuring that data can be recovered even when up to two-thirds of the nodes fail, thus ensuring high availability and reliability.
2. Using the RedStuff encoding algorithm, specifically designed for Byzantine Fault Tolerance, data is encoded into primary and secondary shards through simple operations (mainly XOR operations), which are distributed across storage nodes, with each node holding a unique combination.
3. Unlike existing storage protocols, Walrus adopts a PoS (Proof of Stake) mechanism, which means that the $WAL token will play a key role in ensuring the long-term trustworthiness of the Walrus protocol.
4. By providing efficient decentralized storage solutions, it alleviates the storage pressure on the Sui network.

Mesh

Introduction: Mesh is a modern financial operating system that provides enterprise clients with the ability to transfer digital assets, make encrypted payments, aggregate accounts, and conduct registered securities trading, all within its platform. Mesh is committed to building an open, interconnected, and secure financial ecosystem.【5】

On March 11, completed a $82 million Series B funding round, with part of the funds settled in the stablecoin PYUSD issued by PayPal, marking a first in venture capital.

Investment Institutions: Led by crypto venture capital Paradigm, with follow-on investments from Consensys (the parent company of MetaMask), QuantumLight Capital, Yolo Investments, Hike Ventures, Evolution VC, Opportuna, and AltaIR Capital.

Highlights:

1. Mesh is creating a more open, interconnected, and secure embedded financial ecosystem for businesses and users by integrating with over 300 platforms such as Robinhood, Coinbase, and MetaMask.
2. Its core products Mesh Pay and transfer services support direct payments to over 300 mainstream exchanges and wallets, allowing businesses to receive payments in stablecoins to mitigate risks.

DoubleZero

Introduction: DoubleZero is a global foundational layer network based on the DePIN track, optimized for blockchain and distributed systems. The protocol supports permissionless contributions from independent fiber links to create a dynamic and scalable low-level high-performance global network. This decentralized network infrastructure layer allows systems such as Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains to overcome communication bottlenecks and achieve maximum performance allowed by physics. [6]

On March 5, DoubleZero Foundation completed a $28 million financing at a $400 million valuation, led by Dragonfly and Multicoin Capital, and plans to seek strategic investment at a $600 million valuation.

Investment Institutions/Angel Investors: Dragonfly, Multicoin Capital, Borderless Capital, Superscrypt, Standard Crypto, Wintermute, etc.

Highlights:

1. DoubleZero reduces the burden on validators by pre-filtering incoming junk and duplicate transactions with dedicated hardware, allowing blockchains to share filtering resources without the need for each validator to provide them separately.
2. It improves communication efficiency through clear message routing, tracking, and priority management.
3. The core technological highlight of DoubleZero lies in its unique Two-Ring Architecture, where the Outer Ring connects to the public internet, utilizing hardware (such as FPGA) for attack protection, signature verification, and transaction filtering, while the Inner Ring processes the filtered traffic through dedicated bandwidth lines and constructs consensus.

RedotPay

Introduction: RedotPay is a cryptocurrency payment platform aimed at promoting the use of cryptocurrencies in everyday transactions while simplifying blockchain transactions, allowing users to spend as conveniently as using fiat currency. The platform was established in April 2023, offering crypto cards and a payment platform designed to integrate cryptocurrencies into everyday transactions, with the goal of creating a borderless payment ecosystem that connects fiat currencies and digital assets. [7]

On March 14, raised $40 million in financing, led by Lightspeed.

Investment Institutions/Angel Investors: Led by Lightspeed, with follow-on investments from HSG and Galaxy Ventures, and participation from institutions such as DST Global Partners, Accel, and Vertex Ventures supported by Temasek.

Highlights:

1. RedotPay provides an alternative to traditional banking services, especially for the unbanked population, with over 3 million registered users.
2. The platform has launched its own Visa physical card, which can be used for ATM withdrawals, and has introduced a virtual card that supports digital payment services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay.
3. Expanded blockchain integration by adding Solana and integrating the Ethereum layer 2 solution Arbitrum, in collaboration with StraitX and Visa, to support retail crypto payments in Singapore.
4. Through innovative underlying blockchain technology, a global clearing network has been established that supports over 40 mainstream currencies and enables second-level settlement, providing cross-border payment services to merchants in more than 200 countries.

Summary

This report summarizes the financing situation of the Web3 industry in March 2025. A total of 137 financing deals were completed that month, amounting to $5.07 billion, a significant increase compared to February, mainly influenced by large strategic investments and mergers and acquisitions, indicating high market activity. The CeFi sector performed outstandingly, while investment in emerging fields continued to grow, reflecting investors’ long-term confidence in the Web3 industry. Although the proportion of large-scale financing projects is not high, the financing activity of early-stage projects is relatively high, indicating a strong recognition of the market’s innovation and development potential.
Reference Materials:

1. Cryptorank ,https://cryptorank.io/funding-analytics
2. Cryptorank,https://cryptorank.io/funding-rounds
3. Abound,https://www.joinabound.com/
4. Walrus,https://www.walrus.xyz/
5. MeshConnect,https://www.meshconnect.com/
6. DoubleZero,https://doublezero.xyz/
7. RedotPay,https://www.redotpay.com/

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