In 2022, Messari was valued at 300 million dollars.

Written by: Maher, Foresight News

On June 12, Blockworks, a leading platform for crypto data and capital markets, announced the acquisition of its long-time competitor Messari for over 10 million dollars. Messari had reached a valuation of approximately 300 million dollars in 2022, and the price of this transaction represents a significant discount, highlighting the survival pressure faced by overvalued startups in a deep bear market and the wave of consolidation in the data infrastructure sector.

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

Transaction Details

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

Diran Li

Messari's core assets, including its data platform and API, will be integrated into the Blockworks system. The API supports multidimensional data on assets, markets, exchanges, news, research, stablecoins, protocols, networks, token unlocking, fundraising, social sentiment, event monitoring, watchlists, and more, already utilized 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 a few weeks ago. This financing round was valued at approximately 192 million dollars and was co-led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, aimed explicitly at consolidating fragmented data and information segments in the crypto space.

Blockworks and Messari

Founded in 2018 by Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito, Blockworks is headquartered in New York. Initially focused on media and events, it garnered substantial influence among crypto professionals and investors through podcasts (such as Empire), research reports, and offline summits.

Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito

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

In around October 2025, Blockworks shut down its news department, concentrating resources on data, investor relations, and compliance services, with its Blockworks Intelligence business line becoming a growth focus. The Series A extension financing completed in April of this year was to prepare for this transformation and subsequent acquisitions. Yanowitz publicly stated that the company's revenues were quickly scaling, and this financing aimed explicitly at "integrating fragmented data and information in crypto."

Blockworks' advantage 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 have served institutions wishing to enter the on-chain market, providing full-link 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. The company initially focused on professional-grade crypto research and data analysis, quickly becoming the preferred platform for institutions and retail investors seeking reliable information.

Ryan Selkis

In September 2022, Messari completed a 35 million dollar Series B financing led by Brevan Howard's crypto division, with follow-on investment from Point72 Ventures, bringing the company's valuation to approximately 300 million dollars. This financing round occurred at the end of a bull market, reflecting the strong demand for high-quality data infrastructure at that time. However, following 2022, the bear market persisted, tightening financing for crypto projects and putting pressure on trading volume, placing Messari under real scrutiny as well. After the departure of co-founder and former CEO Ryan Selkis in 2024, the company optimized its workforce. In a bearish environment, overvalued data companies struggled to maintain previous growth expectations, leading to increased survival pressure.

Behind the Acquisition

According to data from Architect Partners, 144 mergers and acquisitions have occurred to date in 2026, totaling 11.8 billion dollars, an approximate 3.5% increase compared to the same period last year. Amid pressure on trading volume and token prices, some overvalued startups have chosen to achieve resource integration or exit through mergers and acquisitions.

Eric Risley, founder of Architect Partners, pointed out that the industry is undergoing a process of differentiation, and pressures might lead to more distress sales. The gap from Messari's 300 million dollar valuation to a transaction price of over 10 million dollars is a microcosm of this phenomenon—valuations based on early growth narratives are being recalibrated in light of fundamentals and capital efficiency.

Yanowitz emphasized in the announcement, "This acquisition connects two facets of the market—the issuer maintaining its business credit record and investors, exchanges, and regulators consuming these records through research, APIs, and automated workflows." The core data foundation provided by Messari is a prerequisite for the effective functioning of AI agents: the capabilities of the agents depend on the data they can access and the APIs they can call.

The current crypto industry is at a critical turning point: institutions are accelerating on-chain transitions, with segments like stablecoins, RWA, and prediction markets 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 formed data moats through long-term integration; similarly, the crypto industry requires such infrastructure but must adapt to the characteristics of on-chain native, real-time, structured data.

Blockworks aims to create a closed-loop system from data collection, validation, analysis, to distribution and compliance, based on Messari's extensive dataset and enhancing it with its issuer-side disclosure and investor relations capabilities. The introduction of AI will further accelerate the high-quality, structured data that serves as core fuel for training and operating on-chain agents. For the Messari team, joining a platform with greater resources and strategic clarity helps leverage their data assets in a larger ecosystem rather than continuing to contract under the pressure of independent operation.

The field of crypto data and research is transitioning from a multitude of voices to a phase of consolidation. Amid cyclical fluctuations, data and trust form a long-term moat, and integration is often one of the optimal paths to navigate through cycles.