RootData February Cryptocurrency Data Summary: M&A Boom Surges, VC Fundraising Hits a Low Point
The total amount of investment and financing reached 950 million USD, with the number of financing events at 99, both showing a month-on-month increase of about 18%. In addition, there were 15 merger and acquisition events this month, marking the fourth consecutive month with more than 10 M&A events.整理：谷煜 \& 饼干 \& Elvin，RootData
At the end of February 2025, BTC plummeted sharply to $78,000, a decline of over 29% from last month's peak ($109,000). The cryptocurrency fear and greed index has dropped below 20, marking the lowest level since September 2024, indicating extreme fear in the market.
After the recent Chinese New Year and Christmas holidays, the crypto investment and financing market has shown signs of recovery. In February, the total financing amount in the crypto sector reached $950 million, with 99 financing events, both up approximately 18% month-on-month. The average financing amount this month was $12.258 million, with a median financing amount of $4.75 million.
Financing trends in the crypto sector over the past 2 years
In this article, we will focus on specific financing data, active investors, trending projects, and other aspects to present the changing trends in the crypto market.
I. Financing Data
This month saw 2 financing events exceeding $100 million, with 19 financing events greater than $10 million. The largest amount was $200 million raised by blockchain financial services company Figure, with participation from Sixth Street. The Delta neutral stablecoin protocol Ethena completed a $100 million strategic financing round, with Franklin Templeton and F-Prime Capital participating. Other popular projects that completed financing include crypto asset management company Bitwise with $70 million, gift card crypto platform Raise with $63 million, and Web3 security tool Blockaid with $50 million.
In terms of financing amounts and rounds, $1-3 million is the most common financing range (34.2%), with seed rounds being the most popular financing stage, as 23 projects completed seed round financing. Notable projects include RWA fixed income protocol Mansa Finance ($10 million), institutional-grade on-chain financial asset management and custody platform Surus ($8 million), Solana native liquid re-staking protocol Fragmetric ($7 million), and fixed-rate lending protocol Tenor Finance ($2.5 million).
Monthly M&A data in the crypto market since 2013
Additionally, 15 M&A events occurred in the crypto market in February, marking the fourth consecutive month with over 10 M&A events, reflecting the overall sluggishness of the investment and financing market, leading more projects to seek exits through M&A. Leading projects are also more willing to optimize their industrial layout and expand their influence through M&A at reasonable valuations.** Typical cases include Phantom acquiring the NFT data tool SimpleHash, Coinbase acquiring the on-chain advertising and attribution platform Spindl, thirdweb acquiring the Web3 social network Yup, and Forte acquiring the decentralized cryptocurrency trust platform Sealance.
II. Active Investors
MH Ventures、Framework Ventures and Bitscale Capital were the most active venture capital firms in February, each participating in 4 deals:
- MH Ventures: Shaga ($4 million), Imua ($5 million), Infinity Ground ($2 million), Fluent ($8 million)
- Framework Ventures: Plasma ($24 million), Reservoir ($14 million), henlo ($3 million), GOAT Gaming ($4 million)
- Bitscale Capital: Blum ($5 million), partnr ($4 million), Fragmetric ($7 million), GOAT Gaming ($4 million)
Following closely are Zee Prime Capital, Haun Ventures, No Limit Holdings, and Big Brain Holdings, each participating in 3 deals. Additionally, Will Price, Raj Gokal, and Balaji Srinivasan were the most active Web3 angel investors in February, each investing in at least 3 projects.
It is also noteworthy that the fundraising amounts for crypto venture capital funds remain at historically low levels, with no funds disclosing completed fundraising this year. Among the 3 crypto venture capital funds that disclosed fundraising in November-December last year, the situations varied; for example, [Accolade Partners](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Investors/detail/Accolade Partners?k=MTI4MTQ=) raised $200 million for its "Fund of Fund," Sora Ventures raised $150 million for its Bitcoin strategy fund, and only [Tioga Capital](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Investors/detail/Tioga Capital?k=MTExNzQ=) raised €40 million for its project fund.
Despite this, new crypto funds continue to emerge. Former executives and investors from [Inception Capital](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Investors/detail/Inception Capital?k=MTUx) (including [Lucas He](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Lucas He?k=MTM2NDc=) and [Calvin Du](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Calvin Du?k=MTM1NTY=)) have jointly founded [tmr Ventures](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Investors/detail/tmr Ventures?k=MTI4OTM=), focusing on investing in and promoting cryptocurrency projects in the real world.
III. Personnel Dynamics
RootData has also recorded the career dynamics of thousands of well-known individuals and executives in the crypto industry. Here are some notable personnel changes:
[Hsin-Ju C.](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Hsin-Ju C.?k=MTUzMjc=) is no longer the Growth Director at Fhenix and has started as a Partner and Head of Operations at Hack VC;
[Shawn Chong](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Shawn Chong?k=MTczMDY=) is no longer a Co-founder of Zerobase and Co-founder and COO of Salus;
[Jack Purdy](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Jack Purdy?k=MTIzMTE=) is no longer the Sales Director at Messari and has started as the VP of Sales at Flipside;
[Brett Li](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Brett Li?k=MTczNTE=) is no longer the Chief Growth Officer at Obol Network and has started as the VP of Marketing at Flipside;
[Brian Trunzo](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Brian Trunzo?k=MjIyOTE=) is no longer the VP and BD Head at Polygon Labs and has started as the Chief Growth Officer at Mantle Network;
[William Fang](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/William Fang?k=MTc0ODc=) is no longer a Senior Associate at Sora Ventures and has started as the Strategic Director at BIO Protocol;
[Sina Nader](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Sina Nader?k=MTU5NzY=) is no longer the Strategic Director at Mysten Labs;
[另维](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Gala Wen?k=MTk5ODY=) is no longer the Ecosystem Development Director at BNB Chain;
[Jim Chang](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Jim Chang?k=MTQ3NjY=) has started as the Product Director at LI.FI after his company Catalyst was acquired;
[Antonio Garcia-Martinez](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Antonio Garcia-Martinez?k=MTYzMDI=) has started as the Base Advertising Director at Coinbase after his company Spindl was acquired.
[Ben Gray](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Ben Gray?k=MjI4MzE=) has started as the Chief Legal Officer at Kraken, with Marco Santori no longer holding that position.
Former FTX COO [Constance Wang](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/member/detail/Constance Wang?k=MTU5Nzc=) has started a new project called Pacifica.
For more personnel information, please visit: https://www.rootdata.com/zh/people
IV. Trending Projects
RootData's popularity score is calculated through normalized data from platform search volume, click volume, user votes, and Twitter popularity index. The projects with the highest popularity scores in February include:
Story Protocol is building web3 technology to fundamentally change the way narratives are created. Its mission is to unleash a new way to create, manage, and license on-chain IP, ultimately forming a "story Lego block" ecosystem that can be remixed and recombined. Story Protocol provides a simplified framework to manage the entire lifecycle of IP development, supporting features like source tracking, frictionless licensing, and revenue sharing. Applications built on Story Protocol are designed for creators across all media (prose, images, games, audio, etc.), enabling writers and artists to track the provenance of their work, allowing anyone to contribute and remix while capturing the value of their contributions.
Kaito is a center for information, attention, and capital distribution based on cryptocurrency, building an interoperable InfoFi layer to connect creators, users, and brands in new ways. By indexing thousands of sources such as social media, governance forums, research, news, podcasts, and meeting notes, and combining them with proprietary search algorithms, semantic LLM capabilities, and real-time analytics, Kaito Pro simplifies access to high-quality, actionable insights in the crypto space. Kaito Yaps leverages advanced AI algorithms to extract and interpret rich signals (e.g., social graphs and semantic understanding) to quantify attention. Kaito Connect is an AI-driven InfoFi network that enables markets to allocate attention and capital in a fairer, more transparent, and efficient manner while rewarding all participants.
Bybit is a cryptocurrency exchange established in March 2018, providing a professional platform where crypto traders can find ultra-fast matching engines, excellent customer service, and multilingual community support. The company offers innovative online spot and derivatives trading services, mining and staking products, an NFT marketplace, and API support to retail and institutional clients worldwide, striving to become the most reliable exchange for emerging digital asset classes.
Monad is building a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain for the next generation of decentralized applications, with a mission to accelerate the disruptive power of decentralization by building a blockchain that is 100 to 1000 times faster than its closest competitors, alleviating severe bottlenecks in existing blockchains, and enabling more complex applications and broader adoption.
Succinct is building a decentralized prover network so that anyone can build blockchain applications and infrastructure protected by cryptographic facts (rather than trust). Succinct unifies the proof supply chain, providing highly available proof generation infrastructure and top-tier pricing for rollups, co-processors, and other applications using zero-knowledge proofs.
Four.meme is a BSC Meme launch platform for launching meme tokens on the BSC chain. Four.meme provides a simplified, low-cost pathway to bring more meme tokens into the world.
0G is a modular AI blockchain with a scalable programmable DA layer suitable for AI dapps. Its modular technology will enable frictionless interoperability between chains while ensuring security, eliminating fragmentation, and maximizing connectivity for a weightless and open metaverse.
Pi crypto was launched in 2018 by Nicolas Kokkalis and Chengdiao Fan, aiming to simplify the accessibility of cryptocurrency and introduce more people to cryptocurrency through a simple crypto mining and management system. The most attractive feature of Pi cryptocurrency at launch was its mobile mining capability. Using the Pi mobile app, users can mine Pi coins on their mobile devices.
Safe is a leading multi-signature wallet provider and digital asset management platform. Its smart contract wallet enables businesses to manage funds with multiple private keys and other access modules through predefined access control schemes.
time.fun is a time tokenization platform that allows time holders to connect with fans. As time holders provide more value to fans, the value of their time naturally increases due to market demand. Whenever someone trades their time, time holders can earn ETH from transaction fees and redemptions.
SoSoValue is a one-stop financial research platform for cryptocurrency investors, providing investors with real, high-quality macro market information to assist in more effective investment research. It also offers AI-based classification system news and research, connecting macroeconomic data with the cryptocurrency market.
12. Infini
Infini is a cryptocurrency payment solution. With the Infini crypto card, users can make instant crypto payments anywhere while earning daily interest.
RedStone is a cross-chain data oracle technology that provides fast and cost-effective data access, complete historical audit trails, and insurance-backed decentralized dispute mechanisms, offering users recourse in cases of inaccurate data provision. The Arweave blockchain project is used to store data and track reputation.
Super Exchange is an on-chain trading platform that unifies token issuance and trading through joint curves—eliminating the need for liquidity providers and ensuring ample liquidity at every price point.
Berachain is a high-performance EVM-compatible blockchain built on liquidity proof consensus. Liquidity proof is a novel consensus mechanism designed to coordinate network incentives, establishing strong synergies between Berachain validators and project ecosystems. Berachain's technology is built on Polaris, a high-performance blockchain framework for building EVM-compatible chains on top of the CometBFT consensus engine.
MegaETH is building ultra-high throughput and low-latency EVM-compatible L2s to accelerate the scalability of Ethereum.
B3, created by Base/Coinbase alumni and OG ETH contributors, is a horizontally scalable gaming ecosystem built on Base. Its development company is NPC Labs.
Solayer is building infiniSVM to scale Solana, a hardware-accelerated SVM that connects multi-execution cluster architectures through SDN and RDMA for unlimited scalability while maintaining atomic state at 100 Gbps.
OpenSea is a well-known NFT marketplace for discovering, collecting, and selling NFTs.
Fragmetric is Solana's native liquid re-staking protocol, with a vision to enhance the security and economic potential of the Solana ecosystem. By leveraging Solana's token expansion, Fragmetric effectively implements NCN reward distribution. Additionally, Fragmetric has designed practical solutions, such as standardized token programs, to utilize various LSTs on the re-staking platform. Fragmetric's mission is to build a secure, transparent, and efficient re-staking infrastructure that empowers users and supports the stability of the Solana re-staking ecosystem.
V. Project Dynamics
In February, RootData also recorded many projects' mainnet launches, recent airdrops, and other events to help users understand important project dynamics in the market and seize earlier alpha opportunities.
Due to space limitations, the above is a portion of the mainnet and token information. For more complete and timely data, please visit the RootData official website (https://www.rootdata.com/zh/) for more information.
