Upon analyzing over 1,200 publicly available crypto pre-seed and seed rounds from 2022, Lattice Fund found that the seed-stage crypto market saw investors refocus on the more stable and established sectors of Infrastructure and Centralized Finance (CeFi).
This came after a period of exploration into emerging sectors in 2021.
Infrastructure and CeFi
According to the latest report from venture capital firm Lattice Fund, this renewed focus resulted in nearly $2 billion and $450 million being deployed into these sectors, marking a 3x and 2x increase over the previous year.
This shift evidenced “strong investor confidence” with 80% of CeFi projects and 78% of Infrastructure projects successfully launching on mainnet, far surpassing sectors such as Consumer Web3 and DeFi.
As newer verticals like NFTs and the metaverse started losing momentum, infrastructure projects, which cater primarily to other crypto companies, remained a consistent bet for long-term growth. Eigenlayer, for example, raised a seed round in January 2022 and has successfully scaled its AVS go-to-market strategy, attracting interest from middleware projects.
Overall, investors poured $5 billion into close to 1,200 startups from the 2022 batch, reflecting a 2.5x rise from the year before.
Ethereum continued to solidify its position as the dominant layer-one ecosystem in 2022, attracted $1.4 billion in investment, and far outpaced rival networks like Solana, which raised nearly $350 million.
While Ethereum and Solana projects saw similar success in securing follow-on funding, other ecosystems struggled. Polkadot’s ecosystem, for one, saw a significant 40% drop in fundraising, and no teams in the NEAR ecosystem managed to raise additional capital.
Meanwhile, Binance’s ecosystem faced high attrition, with one-third of its teams ceasing operations. Solana’s failure rate doubled from 2021 to 26%.
Despite these challenges, Bitcoin projects remained notably resilient, with 100% of teams still active after two years, highlighting its enduring stability amid a volatile market.
NFTs and Metaverse Lose Momentum
Attracting users became increasingly challenging during the bear market as retail interest declined. Sectors that were prominent during the 2022 wave, such as NFTs, the metaverse, and gaming, are struggling to maintain user engagement compared to two years ago.
The report also stated that sectors that dominate today’s narratives may not always align with long-term investor interest.
Despite having 75 teams raise nearly $280 million, the metaverse has seen no project achieve product-market fit, and over 21% of teams have ceased operations.
Meanwhile, sectors like DePIN and AI, which were barely on the radar in 2022, have emerged as some of the hottest topics today.