In 2022, Messari was valued at $300 million.
By: Ma He, Foresight News
On June 12, Blockworks, a leading platform in crypto data and capital markets, announced the acquisition of its long-time competitor Messari for a consideration exceeding $10 million. Messari reached a valuation of approximately $300 million in 2022, and the significant discount in this transaction clearly reflects the survival pressure faced by high-valued startups and the wave of consolidation in the data infrastructure sector amid the deep bear market.
Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz stated in the official announcement, "Over the past eight years, Messari has provided transparency, market intelligence, and comprehensive data coverage for every crypto asset to the industry, building the most comprehensive dataset in the sector. This integration will combine Blockworks' strengths in issuer disclosure, investor relations, and compliance workflows with Messari's strengths in data breadth and API capabilities to jointly build a 'single source of truth' for the on-chain market."
Transaction Details
According to Blockworks' official announcement and confirmation from multiple media outlets, after the acquisition is completed, Messari CEO Diran Li will join Blockworks in a senior leadership role.
Diran Li
Messari's core assets, including its data platform and API, will be integrated into Blockworks' ecosystem. The API supports multi-dimensional data such as 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 after completing the Series A extension financing a few weeks ago. The round was valued at approximately $192 million, co-led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others, and the explicit purpose is to integrate the 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 accumulated significant influence among crypto practitioners 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 an on-chain capital market intelligence platform, focusing on building institutional-grade data, investor relations, and compliance tools.
Around October 2025, Blockworks shut down its news division and concentrated resources on data, investor relations, and compliance service segments, with its Blockworks Intelligence business line becoming a key growth focus. The Series A extension financing completed in April this year was precisely to reserve ammunition for this transformation and subsequent mergers and acquisitions. Yanowitz publicly stated that the company's revenue is scaling rapidly, and the clear goal of this financing is to "integrate the fragmented data and information field in crypto".
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 have served institutions looking to enter the on-chain market, providing end-to-end support from due diligence to continuous monitoring.
Founded in 2018 as well, with headquarters in New York, Messari was established by Ryan Selkis and Dan McArdle. In its early days, it focused on professional-grade crypto research and data analysis, quickly becoming the preferred platform for institutions and retail investors to obtain reliable information.
Ryan Selkis
In September 2022, Messari completed a $35 million Series B financing, led by Brevan Howard's crypto division, with participation from Point72 Ventures and others, valuing the company at approximately $300 million. This round of financing occurred at the end of the bull market, reflecting the strong market demand for high-quality data infrastructure at that time. However, after 2022, the bear market persisted, crypto project financing tightened, trading volumes came under pressure, and Messari also faced real challenges. After co-founder and former CEO Ryan Selkis left in 2024, the company carried out personnel optimization. In a bear market environment, high-valued data companies find it difficult 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, with a total value of $11.8 billion, an increase of approximately 3.5% compared to the same period last year. Against the backdrop of pressure on trading volumes and token prices, some high-valued startups choose to achieve resource integration or exit through mergers and acquisitions.
Eric Risley, founder of Architect Partners, pointed out that the industry is in a process of differentiation, and pressure may lead to more distressed sales. The gap between Messari's $300 million valuation and the $10 million transaction price is a microcosm of this phenomenon—early valuations based on growth narratives are being recalibrated in the face of fundamentals and capital efficiency.
Yanowitz emphasized in the announcement: "This acquisition connects two sides of the market—issuers maintain the credit records of their businesses, and investors, exchanges, and regulators consume these records through research, APIs, and automated workflows." The core data infrastructure 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 current crypto industry is at a critical inflection point: institutions are accelerating their on-chain presence, tracks such as stablecoins, RWA, and prediction markets are continuing to expand, and the demand for standardized disclosure, compliance monitoring, real-time data, and programmable access is surging. In traditional financial markets, platforms like Bloomberg, FactSet, and S&P Global have formed data moats through long-term integration; the crypto sector also needs similar infrastructure, but it must adapt to the characteristics of on-chain native, real-time, and structured data.
Blockworks, based on Messari's massive dataset, superimposes its own issuer-side disclosure and IR capabilities to form a full closed loop from data collection, verification, analysis to distribution and compliance. The introduction of AI will further accelerate the use of high-quality, structured data as the core fuel for training and running on-chain agents. For the Messari team, joining a platform with more resources and strategic clarity will help their data assets realize value in a larger ecosystem, rather than continuing to shrink under the pressure of independent operation.
The crypto data and research field is moving from a period of blooming diversity to integration of the fittest. Amid cyclical fluctuations, data and trust are long-term moats, and integration is often one of the best paths to navigate the cycle.