Blockchain Analytics Provider Nansen raises $75M

More blockchain platforms are receiving Funding in 2021.

2020 and 2021 have been incredible years for FinTech and crypto startups. We are going to start covering them, and on IPO times as well. I prefer to put most of my venture capital related articles there. But this is a crypto platform so also exciting for the Crypto Bulls.

It was just in June, that they raised $12 million. Nansen, an analytics platform for blockchain that unifies on-chain data with disparate market signals, announced at the end of June, 2021 a $12 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Now at the end of 2021 in December, Nansen — the Singapore-based blockchain platform that analyzes on-chain data, wallet labels, and blockchain entities — announced it has raised $75 million. I really like that this is a Singapore based company.

Nansen analyzes and labels 100M+ Ethereum wallets and their activity.
So you can separate the signal from the noise. That’s their tagline currently in their website. It feels a bit like a Bloomberg for Crypto type platform.

This is really a Coinbase acquisition target. Other participating investors include Skyfall Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, imToken Ventures, Mechanism Capital and QCP Capital. I really like the coverage of Venture Beats recently on obscure funding rounds of off-beat companies.

• Nansen says it uses quality market intelligence and actionable analytics to help investors and financial institutions make more informed decisions on project discovery, due diligence, and trading.

• The company claims its analytics technology enables easier exploration of complex on-chain data on investors’ money flows and exchange activity, and analyzes emerging trends in DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs through user-friendly, streamlined visual dashboards.

This is an important company I believe in the mainstream evolution DeFi.

• The company says it analyzes billions of on-chain data points, millions of wallet labels, and thousands of entities on leading blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Fantom, Avalanche, Celo, and more.

This company then is showing how mainstream Crypto has gone so far in the early 2020s. What’s startling is how young this company is.

Founded in 2020, Nansen analyses billions of on-chain data points, millions of wallet labels and thousands of entities on Ethereum, to provide quality market intelligence and actionable analytics, helping investors and financial institutions make more informed decisions when it comes to project discovery, due diligence, and trading. 

The June round had participation from GIC, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, SCB 10X, and other leading investors.

Nansen cofounder and CEO Alex Svanevik told reporters in an email interview that the company will introduce new product lines like Nansen API and Nansen Query, enabling institutional clients to access Nansen’s on-chain data programmatically. This is really the BigData of crypto we are witnessing.

The multi-chain interoperable era is coming. Svanevik said Nansen will use this additional capital to hire talent across product, engineering, operations, finance, sales, and marketing — adding that the company is now in a position to make strategic and complementary acquisitions.

Business Intelligence and Investment Data Analytics for Crypto

This company intersects with Coinage and Robinhood users in interesting ways. Nansen says it uses quality market intelligence and actionable analytics to help investors and financial institutions make more informed decisions on project discovery, due diligence, and trading.

The crypto space has a lot of hype in 2021. Bitcoin’s price is still elevated. The crypto space has witnessed an explosion in the past year, including increasing interests in new areas such as NFTs and DeFi. This won’t likely go away. Crypto startups are scaling at tremendous rates as talent leaves banking for DeFi and FinTech.

Nansen currently has over 70 employees and says it expects to double that number in the next six months. The company has raised $88.2 million in total to date. This is clearly only the beginning for Nansen. You can check out their YouTube here.

A lot has happened since they last announced their Series A in June, as they note in their recent blog:

• Expanded our blockchain support from Ethereum and Polygon, which now includes Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Fantom, Avalanche, Celo and Ronin

• Increased our coverage to 100M+ wallet labels across multiple blockchains

• Became the market-leader for NFT analytics with in-depth coverage of over 18K collections

• Added a new institutional product line, including Nansen API and Nansen Query

• 55 new team members from 28 countries joined the team

Nansen’s primary product is a network of dashboards designed around specific verticals in the crypto space, but I could see them getting into new related spaces.

Beyond the very hot DeFi space, Nansen is tapping their labeled database to find investor opportunities in yield farming, liquidity pools, DEX data, and even helping traders scout out particularly hot NFT collections.