1,200 Crypto Projects That Raised Seed Rounds 2 Years Ago: Where Are They Now?

This paper analyzes over 1,200 publicly announced seed and pre-seed rounds from 2022, providing insight into trends across the industry, specific sectors, and ecosystem tiers. As with previous reports, we are open-sourcing our database for further exploration and analysis. We welcome your feedback and any corrections; please reach out to us at hi@lattice.fund.

Executive Summary

The 2022 cohort raised capital during one of the most explosive periods in crypto history. Teams that announced raises this year likely benefited from the bull market of 2021 and early 2022. Given the market hype at the time, we expected the data to show a negative impact compared to cohorts that raised in a bear market. Our analysis confirmed those expectations — but also uncovered some bright spots.

Nearly 1,200 companies raised a combined $5 billion since 2022, a 2.5x increase over the prior year. Here are the key highlights:

2022 Breakouts

Every year produces a handful of major success stories, and 2022 was no exception. In infrastructure, we saw seed rounds from Eigenlayer, a restaking protocol; Privy, a wallet-as-a-service provider; and Sei, a parallel EVM — each of which helped catalyze a broader narrative. In DeFi, the 2022 breakout stories were perp DEXes like Vertex and Apex, and professional NFT exchange Blur. Gaming dominated the consumer sector, attracting nearly $700 million in investment. Despite that significant capital, the two biggest success stories raised relatively little. Pixels and PlayEmber each raised under $3 million in their seed rounds.

Launching Into a Challenging Market

Despite the bear market, nearly three-quarters of projects successfully shipped their products to mainnet. Product-market fit (PMF) and follow-on funding both proved harder to achieve than in 2021, declining significantly year-over-year. 18% of the cohort shut down or ceased development, up from 13% in 2021. Only 12% of teams secured follow-on venture funding, down sharply from 50% in 2021. Only 15% of projects launched a token, down from 50% in 2021.

A Return to Infrastructure and CeFi

Following 2021's more speculative bets, investors rotated back into stabler, more established sectors like infrastructure and CeFi, deploying nearly $2 billion and nearly $4.5 billion into those sectors respectively — 3x and 2x the 2021 figures. 80% of CeFi projects and 78% of infrastructure projects shipped to mainnet, reflecting strong investor conviction in these sectors. Results for the application layer were more mixed, with 66% of consumer-facing Web3 products and 68% of DeFi teams shipping to mainnet. Consumer teams were more likely to shut down, with a closure rate nearly double that of infrastructure teams. Payment (86%) and wallet (90%) projects were most likely to ship to mainnet.

Ethereum Leads, Bitcoin Holds Steady

On the fundraising front, Ethereum remained the dominant Layer 1 ecosystem, while Bitcoin projects continued to demonstrate resilience. $1.4 billion was invested in Ethereum-based projects, followed by nearly $350 million in Solana-based projects. The Polkadot ecosystem saw a significant drop in fundraising, down 40% year-over-year. Teams building on both Solana and Ethereum were equally likely to secure follow-on funding. By contrast, no teams in the NEAR ecosystem managed to raise follow-on capital. Binance ecosystem projects had the lowest survival rate, with a third of teams ceasing operations. Solana also saw its failure rate double compared to 2021, reaching 26%. Bitcoin projects demonstrated remarkable resilience, with 100% of teams still active two years later.

Methodology

This report draws on a combination of first-party data supplemented by insights from Messari, Root Data, Crunchbase, and other sources. To assess the progress of the pre-seed market, we classified each company by stage — including "active but not yet shipped" and "no longer active" — and further segmented by ecosystem and sector. While we made every effort to ensure data accuracy, we acknowledge that errors may exist due to reliance on third-party data. For ecosystems, we only included those with more than 15 teams that raised their first funding round in our charts.

One of the most challenging aspects of this analysis was determining whether a project had achieved product-market fit (PMF). Unlike the objective "product shipped" milestone, PMF is often subjective and can be fleeting — especially in a fast-moving crypto market. We combined on-chain data from analytics providers like Dune Analytics and DeFiLlama with information from company websites and blogs to make these determinations.

(Note: Lattice's infographic, read left to right, classifies analyzed products into several stages: Active but Not Shipped, Product Shipped, Has PMF, Has Token, No Longer Active, Acquired, and Shut Down.)

Seed Round Project Status

Our pre-seed survey began as an internal analysis to identify projects gaining traction that had not yet raised follow-on capital — potential targets for Lattice. But the data turned out to be compelling enough to share with a broader industry audience.

This research is valuable because it illuminates the health of broader sectors, ecosystems, and the early-stage market over time. Given that most pre-seed teams raise enough to operate for roughly two years, we decided to use that timeframe to evaluate seed cohorts.

In 2022, over 1,200 crypto companies raised more than $5 billion across seed and pre-seed rounds. Looking back at this cohort, 72% of companies have shipped to mainnet or an equivalent network, up from 66% last year. At the same time, 18% of projects have failed to ship or have shut down — in line with last year's data. The most notable decline, however, is in the number of teams that found PMF, which dropped to nearly 1.5%. It's worth noting that it's difficult to assess the true traction that offline projects achieved, so we may be missing some teams with early PMF.

User acquisition became harder in a bear market as retail interest waned. The hot sectors of 2022 — NFTs, the metaverse, and gaming — failed to attract users the same way they had two years prior. In contrast, infrastructure projects serving primarily other crypto companies proved more resilient. A standout example is Eigenlayer, which announced its seed round in January 2022 and has successfully expanded its AVS listing strategy, with middleware projects eager to collaborate.

This serves as a useful reminder that today's hot sectors don't always align with investor interest. The metaverse sector, for example, had 75 teams raising nearly $280 million — yet none found PMF and more than 21% shut down. You'd be hard-pressed to hear anyone talk about the metaverse today. Compare that to DePINs and AI, which were barely on anyone's radar in 2022 but are now two of the hottest topics in the space.

(Data chart showing that 72% of 2022 seed round projects have reached mainnet.)

VCs Tightening Their Purse Strings

The 2022 cohort raised during one of the most euphoric periods in crypto history. Teams that announced raises in 2022 may have done so before the Terra and FTX collapses sent the market into a deep freeze. While total fundraising was up 92% from 2021, the follow-on market tells a different story. Only 12% of the 2022 cohort managed to raise additional capital over the past two years — a stark contrast to the 2021 cohort, where nearly a third of teams secured follow-on funding.

Notably, token launches also declined year-over-year, with only 15% of the 2022 cohort launching a token compared to 50% in 2021. This sharp decline can be attributed to two main factors: 1) The 2022 cohort may have missed the bull market window, with many teams rushing to launch in the first half of 2024, only to be hurt by a string of launches throughout the summer. 2) Declining DeFi liquidity made DEX launches less attractive, and token issuance shifted toward centralized exchanges (CEXs). CEXs now charge substantial listing fees — often reaching seven figures — and require a significant portion of token supply. The saturation of the token market, combined with CEX gatekeeping and the diminishing appeal of DEX launches, has made it harder to bring tokens to market.

Flight to Infrastructure

Infrastructure investment tripled compared to 2021, reflecting a clear shift in investor focus. While interest in infrastructure appeared to cool toward the end of 2024, it was the most favored sector throughout 2022 and 2023. By contrast, DeFi was the only sector to see a decline in investment relative to the prior year — likely a hangover from DeFi Summer 2020, which was marked by a proliferation of get-rich-quick schemes and Ponzi-like tokenomics.

Investors were rewarded for chasing the infrastructure trend: those teams were most likely to secure follow-on funding and ship to mainnet. DeFi and consumer teams, on the other hand, were more likely to launch tokens but also more likely to shut down. The application layer felt the squeeze — starved of additional capital, teams were forced to either launch a token or wind down.

Not All Ecosystems Are Created Equal

Progress across ecosystems reveals notable differences in project success rates. Nearly 80% of Ethereum-based projects shipped a product, outpacing Solana, where only 61% shipped — down from 75% in 2021. While Solana clearly weathered the bear market reasonably well, the wave of capital that flooded in during late 2021 may have led to overexpansion.

Failure rates among 2022 pre-seed teams remain broadly in line with the 2021 cohort, but there are notable swings within individual ecosystems. As observed last year, teams in the Binance ecosystem were most likely to shut down — and Avalanche ecosystem teams have now joined them. Notably, Solana-based projects saw their failure rate double, with over 25% of teams ceasing operations. This increase was likely driven by speculative capital that flooded in during the bull market, leading to overexpansion followed by burnout in what was a particularly brutal period for Solana post-FTX. That said, it's clear that the teams that survived that difficult stretch were ultimately rewarded. Also worth highlighting is the resilience of Bitcoin ecosystem teams, which not only continued to ship but demonstrated exceptional staying power — reflecting the reliability of the Bitcoin network itself.

The follow-on funding picture for 2022 shows a significant decline across all major ecosystems. Only 13% of Ethereum-based projects were able to raise additional capital, down from 31% in 2021. Similarly, only 13% of Solana startups secured follow-on funding, down sharply from 30% the prior year. Notably, ecosystems like Flow, StarkNet, and NEAR struggled to attract additional investment, with no projects on those platforms securing follow-on funding — highlighting the challenges these platforms face in sustaining developer and investor interest. This is particularly striking when you consider the amount of capital that flowed into the base layer of each ecosystem in late 2021 and 2022: Dapper Labs raised nearly $600 million in 2021, NEAR raised $500 million in 2022, and Starkware raised nearly $200 million across 2021 and 2022.

What's Next

The 2022 cohort is in a tougher spot than the 2021 cohort. Finding PMF remains a challenge in a sideways market with no meaningful surge in new retail participation. Some teams have pivoted toward sectors seeing hot retail engagement today (e.g., gambling-adjacent applications). On top of that, the significant drop in teams securing follow-on funding limits the runway these teams have to pivot to something new. Finally, the sharp increase in the number of pre-seed crypto startups combined with a tighter token launch market means more teams are competing for a narrower token issuance window.

Compounding all of this is the reality that investors have rotated into the hottest sectors and ecosystems of the moment (e.g., DePINs and AI) and the hottest chains (e.g., Base and Monad). This underscores that returns don't come from chasing what's hot today, but from identifying what will be hot 1–2 years from now.

We have no doubt that the pre-seed market in crypto will remain healthy, with nearly all funds actively deploying — including the newly launched crypto accelerator from a16z. Whether the late-stage market remains robust is still an open question for this cohort as they seek to raise Series A rounds and beyond. Even within our own portfolio, we've seen firsthand how narrative shifts can impact a founder's ability to raise capital.

Sectors and Trends to Watch

Privacy-Enhancing Applications

There has been a recent uptick in investment in privacy-enhancing technologies, with two trends emerging in privacy infrastructure over the past year: Zero-Knowledge Transport Layer Security (ZK TLS) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). ZK TLS adds a privacy-enhancing layer to secure communications on the existing internet. ZK TLS projects like Opacity are partnering with companies such as NOSH — a Lattice portfolio company — to enable NOSH to tap into existing web2 delivery marketplaces. In this example, drivers log into the Nosh driver app using their Doordash credentials, which the protocol recognizes as proof of identity. As the network's demand matures, drivers can fulfill Doordash orders from the Nosh driver app, and if an order comes from the protocol network (rather than Doordash), the driver can earn tokens. We expect to see more novel use cases emerge for this new privacy primitive.

Similar to ZK TLS, advances in FHE infrastructure could give rise to a new layer of crypto applications — from private DeFi to DePIN-powered data collection. An early real-world example of this technology is sharing sensitive health information with AI companies. Lattice portfolio company Pulse is using a DePIN flywheel to collect health data that can be monetized by allowing researchers to analyze encrypted genetic data to identify patterns or biomarkers without ever accessing raw genetic information, preserving privacy throughout. As privacy infrastructure matures and converges with broader trends — specifically AI agents and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) for data collection — it could unlock a new wave of consumer and enterprise applications.

Augmented Reality Applications and Infrastructure

Broader technology trends are strongly shaping the direction of crypto founder activity and capital flows. We saw this with the surge in AI-related startups in 2023–2024 following OpenAI's large-scale AI breakthroughs. With Apple, Meta, and Snap all making significant strategic moves in AR, we expect to see an increasing number of crypto startups in this space as AR technology eventually reaches the mainstream. One example from the Lattice portfolio is Meshmap, which is building a decentralized 3D map of the world. As AR device adoption accelerates in the coming years, 3D maps for app developers to build experiences on will become essential infrastructure. The metaverse excitement of 2021 may have been premature, but the lessons from last year and the findings of this report suggest that what's flying under the radar today is where alpha can be generated.

Blockchain-Enabled Collectibles Markets

Collectibles trading has largely been associated with digital asset trading (particularly NFTs), but a blockchain-enabled collectibles market is emerging — from spirits marketplaces like BAXUS to watch platforms like watch.io and Kettle. Collectibles trading is a massive offline market, but one held back by issues such as the lack of instant settlement, physical custody, and reliable authentication.

We believe these challenges create an opportunity for "Blockchain-Enabled Collectibles Marketplaces" (BECMs), purpose-built to meet the needs of collectibles traders. BECMs enable instant cash settlement, dramatically cutting settlement times from weeks to seconds using stablecoins, and use NFTs to represent physical assets held by trusted custodians. This model can unify fragmented markets, improve liquidity, eliminate the burden of personal storage, and establish trust through authentication. BECMs also enable financial innovation — such as collectibles lending — making collecting more financially accessible. With these efficiency benefits, BECMs have the potential to significantly expand the total addressable market for collectibles by bringing in more traders, liquidity, and inventory.

Ecosystem Rotation

Our tables and charts only include ecosystems with more than 15 projects that have raised venture capital — with the smallest qualifying count being close to 15, and thus excluded. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we anticipate a major ecosystem shift, with Polkadot, NEAR, and Avalanche being displaced by L2 ecosystems, as well as emerging L1 and L2 ecosystems like Monad, Berachain, and MegaETH — based on the trends we've observed.