In the year When 2022 Billions Will Be Invested In Crypto Infrastructure And Why It Matters Today

Analyzing more than 1,200 publicly available crypto pre-seed and seed rounds since 2022, Lattice Fund observed that seed-stage crypto market investors focused on the more stable and established sectors of infrastructure and centralized finance (CeFi).

This comes after a period of exploration into emerging sectors in 2021.

Infrastructure and CeFi

According to a recent report from venture capitalist Lattice Fund, this renewed focus has resulted in nearly $2 billion and $450 million being invested in these sectors, a 3x and 2x increase compared to last year.

This change reflects “strong investor confidence” with 80% of CeFi projects and 78% of infrastructure projects successfully launched in advanced sectors such as Consumer Web3 and DeFi.

As new verticals such as NFTs and Metaverse begin to lose momentum, infrastructure projects that primarily serve other crypto companies have remained consistent bets for long-term growth. For example, Eigenlayer raised a seed round in January 2022 and successfully advanced its AVS go-to-market strategy, attracting interest from middleware projects.

Overall, investors from the 2022 batch invested $5 billion into 1,200 startups, a 2.5x increase from last year.

Ethereum was launched in 2015. By 2022, it continues to strengthen its core layer-one ecosystem, attracting $1.4 billion in investment, and rival networks like Solana have raised nearly $350 million.

While Ethereum and Solana projects have seen similar success in securing continued funding, other ecosystems have struggled. The Polkadot ecosystem was down 40% in its first fundraising, and no other nearby groups were able to raise any additional capital.

Meanwhile, Binance's ecosystem has been hit hard, with a third of its teams out of business. Solana's decline has doubled to 26 percent by 2021.

Despite these challenges, Bitcoin projects remain strong, with 100% of groups still active after two years, highlighting the enduring stability in a volatile market.

NFTs and the Metaverse Lose Momentum

Attracting consumers became more challenging as retail interest declined during the bear market. Sectors that were popular in the 2022 wave, such as NFTs, metaverse and gaming, are struggling to maintain user engagement compared to two years ago.

The report also notes that the sectors that dominate today's narratives may not always align with long-term investor interests.

Although 75 teams have raised nearly $280 million, MetaVas has not seen any of its projects reach product-market status, and more than 21% of teams have ceased operations.

Meanwhile, sectors like DePIN and AI, which were barely on the 2022 radar, have emerged as hot topics today.