grid-line

49 Soaring Blockchain Companies & Startups (2023)

by Josh Howarth
July 24, 2023

You may also like: 

The global blockchain market is expected to reach a market size of $69.04B by 2027.

Notably in the US, 75% of IoT technology adopters have or will implement blockchain into their stack.

There are now more than 70 million registered blockchain wallets.

This list presents 49 soaring startups that are making an impact on the blockchain space.

1. Fireblocks

undefined

5-year search growth: 3100%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2018

Location: New York, NY

Funding: $1B (Series E)

What they do: Fireblocks provides blockchain security solutions to institutions. In particular, they help clients custody cryptocurrencies, manage treasury operations, access decentralized finance and manage their digital asset operations.” Further, Fireblocks has secured more than $2T in crypto assets for their 1,000+ clients.

2. Sorare

undefined

5-year search growth: 3800%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: Paris, France

Funding: $739.2M (Series B)

What they doSorare is a blockchain-powered fantasy soccer platform. Users can play fantasy soccer by utilizing the platform’s gaming arena. Additionally, the platform also serves as a marketplace for digital player cards where users can buy, sell and trade limited edition digital cards. So far, Sorare is officially licensed to issue cards for 280 soccer clubs.

3. Moonpay

undefined

5-year search growth: 5200%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2018

Location: Miami, FL

Funding: $647.7M (Series A)

What they do: Moonpay provides cryptocurrency sellers and exchanges (e.g. Binance, OpenSea and OKEX) with the technology required to allow everyday consumers to buy and sell cryptocurrency using traditional payment rails (known as On-Ramps and Off-Ramps). According to a late 2021 article, Moonpay has more than 7M customers.

4. Ape Board

undefined

5-year search growth: 100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: $1.2M (Seed)

What they doApe Board aggregates a user’s DeFi portfolios and displays them in a single portfolio dashboard. The platform is capable of tracking DeFi portfolios on addresses across 42 different blockchains.

5. Belfrics Group

undefined

5-year search growth: -100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2014

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: Undisclosed

What they doBelfrics Group is a cryptocurrency exchange platform that uses blockchain to offer KYC verification to its users. The company currently operates in 7 countries and allows the trading of 25 cryptocurrencies.

6. CoinBurp

undefined

5-year search growth: 300%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: London, England

Funding: $2.4M (Pre-Seed)

What they doCoinBurp is a digital asset trading platform where users can create a wallet and start trading different cryptocurrencies. The startup is looking to launch its own utility and governance token named $BURP.

7. Pastel Network

undefined

5-year search growth: 67%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2018

Location: New York, New York

Funding: $5M (Seed)

What they doPastel Network is a peer-to-peer decentralized platform that allows users to register, trade and collect digital assets. The startup has an estimated yearly revenue of $1.3M.

8. Zerion

undefined

5-year search growth: 2100%

Search growth status: Exploding

Year founded: 2016

Location: San Francisco, California

Funding: $33M (Series B)

What they doZerion has built a digital marketplace that allows users to invest in multiple DeFi projects. The marketplace offers convenience by allowing users to get data on DeFi projects, trade them and track their portfolio, all under a single platform. The marketplace supports over 60 DeFi projects and has over 220,000 monthly active users.

9. Buenbit

undefined

5-year search growth: 600%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Funding: $11M (Series A)

What they doBuenbit is a cryptocurrency trading platform specifically targeting the Latin American market. The startup allows users to trade over 20 cryptocurrencies.

10. Fumbi

undefined

5-year search growth: 180%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: Bratislava, Slovakia

Funding: $1.6M (Series Unknown)

What they doFumbi is a cryptocurrency trading platform that replaces collective investment schemes and allows users to own their cryptocurrencies directly. The startup has over 115,000 users and trades 34 cryptocurrencies.

11. Nayms

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2019

Location: London, England

Funding: $20.4M (Initial Coin Offering)

What they doNayms allows crypto investors to invest in smart contracts that insure cryptocurrencies and other crypto projects. The startup has secured $6M by allowing investors to subscribe to its native token, NAYM, which launched in the first quarter of 2022.

12. Blockdaemon

undefined

5-year search growth: 933%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Los Angeles, California

Funding: $431.3M (Series Unknown)

What they doBlockdaemon is a node management tool allowing businesses to manage their blockchain applications. Blockdaemon currently supports over 60 blockchain networks.

13. Solrise Finance

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: London, England

Funding: $3.4M (Seed)

What they doSolrise Finance offers fund managers a platform to start a new DeFi fund. It also gives investors a platform to invest in DeFi hedge funds. The startup’s network is built on the Solana blockchain.

14. Klaytn

undefined

5-year search growth: 2300%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2019

Location: Seoul, South Korea

Funding: $90M (Initial Coin Offering)

What they do: Klaytn is a blockchain platform developed by Ground X, the blockchain subsidiary of South Korean internet company Kakao. It aims to provide a user-friendly blockchain experience for both developers and end-users by offering high-performance, scalability, and reliability. Klaytn focuses on promoting the mass adoption of blockchain technology by enabling businesses to build and deploy decentralized applications (DApps) with ease.

15. OpenOcean

=undefined

5-year search growth: 3100%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2019

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: $2M (Seed)

What they doOpenOcean aggregates price information of multiple decentralized exchanges and compares them to prices offered by centralized exchanges. The startup aggregates DEXes on Etherum, Binance Smart Chain, Tron and Ontology.

16. Synapse Network

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: London, England

Funding: $50.7M (Series B)

What they doSynapse Network is a cross-chain investment ecosystem. It opens the way for small investors to invest in promising startups in their earliest development phases. Investing through Synapse Network is facilitated by $SNP, the system’s native token.

17. bitsika

undefined

5-year search growth: 600%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: New Castle, DE

Funding: $185K (Convertible Note)

What they dobitsika has created a payment application facilitating instant money transfers and digital currency trading. According to Pitchbook, the company is looking to close their Series A funding soon.

18. Mercado Bitcoin

undefined

5-year search growth: -40%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2013

Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil

Funding: $288M (Series C)

What they doMercado Bitcoin allows investors to trade multi-category crypto-assets by providing a comprehensive crypto exchange platform. The venture reduces market confusion by listing only assets with real value and scalable prospects. Mercado Bitcoin got a lot of media attention when it announced that it earned $200M in funding from SoftBank Group.

19. Texture Capital

undefined

5-year search growth: -100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2019

Location: New York, New York

Funding: Undisclosed

What they doTexture Capital works to improve the capital-raising journey for private companies through security tokenization. The startup’s executive team are seasoned financial industry experts who have previously held roles at ITG, Liquidnet and Societe Generale.

20. Telcoin

undefined

5-year search growth: -33%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Funding: $10M (Seed)

What they doTelco is looking to change how people transfer money across countries. It has developed an Ethereum-secured platform that makes it possible to send money instantly across the globe. The startup targets an average cost of sending a remittance of less than 2%, which is much cheaper than the current average cost of 7%.

21. Coinvise

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Gujrat, India

Funding: $2.6M (Seed)

What they doCoinvise is an online community that allows creators to monetize their online content and engagement. Users can create a following on the platform and use that to sell their minted collectibles. Coinvise has been financed by Galaxy Digital Partners and IDEO CoLab Ventures, to name a few of their 18 investors.

22. Amara Finance

undefined

5-year search growth: 293%

Search growth status: Exploding

Year founded: 2021

Location: Boston, MA

Funding: $1M (Seed)

What they doAmara Finance helps connect popular cryptocurrencies to digital assets. The startup’s point-of-differentiation is that it allows such a connection to happen at a very low-friction value transmission. 8 investors fund the New York-based venture over 1 funding round.

23. World Coin

undefined

5-year search growth: 567%

Search growth status: Exploding

Year founded: 2019

Location: Berlin, Germany

Funding: $125M (Initial Coin Offering)

What they doWorldcoin is building a device that gives out cryptocurrency to people across the globe. The “catch” is that, for a person to receive their crypto, they have to let the device scan their eyeballs. When asked about their goal, the Sam Altman-backed startup says they want to build a universal income system that pays everybody who signs up. According to the startup, their eye-scanning device is just a way to ensure that people do not sign up multiple times.

24. Terawulf

undefined

5-year search growth: 5800%

Search growth status: Exploding

Year founded: 2021

Location: Easton, Maryland

Funding: $305.1M (Post-IPO Equity)

What they doTeraWulf operates a crypto mining farm in Maryland. Because more than 90% of their energy comes from zero-carbon sources, the startup can mine Bitcoin while having a minimal damaging impact on the environment 25.

25. Interlay

undefined

5-year search growth: 40%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2019

Location: London, England

Funding: $9.5M (Series Unknown)

What they doInterlay provides a tool that allows users to invest their Bitcoin into different DeFi projects. Interlay is built as a parachain Polkadot that can be used across multiple blockchains.

26. NFTScoring

undefined

5-year search growth: -100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Funding: $1.7M (Pre-Seed)

What they do: NFTScoring provides advanced investment tools for NFT traders and speculators. In particular, they use AI to analyze the data on more than 1,000 projects with the goal of identifying trending and potentially undervalued collections.

27. Poko

undefined

5-year search growth: 14%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2021

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: $9M (Seed)

What they do: Poko is working to “replace LLCs with DAOs in emerging markets.” According to their website, this means they help founders set up a decentralized autonomous organization, raise funds, and deploy dramatically faster relative to the current process of setting up an LLC in a foreign country.

28. GoSats

undefined

5-year search growth: 1100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2019

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: $4.8M (Seed)

What they do: GoSats is a cashback/credit card reward company based in India. Similar to US-based Fold, they reward users with Bitcoin instead of miles or points. As of September 2022 they had more than 100,000 customers.

29. Yuga Labs

undefined

5-year search growth: 1900%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Miami, FL

Funding: $450M (Series Unknown)

What they do: Upon their launch in 2021, Yuga Labs was the team behind the wildly famous Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. Over the past year, they’ve grown into an NFT marketing powerhouse, acquiring the industry-leading Crypto Punks project while expanding into everything from merchandise to metaverse gaming. 

30. Argo

undefined

5-year search growth: 36%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Beverly Hills, CA

Funding: Undisclosed

What they do: Similar to NFT music companies, Argo helps content producers monetize their short films and TV episodes by cutting out the middlemen. In particular, they compensate creators through a direct ad revenue sharing model while also allowing them to monetize their audiences via NFT sales (which may or may not be the only way to gain access to a creator’s video content).

31. Finnt

undefined

5-year search growth: -100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2021

Location: Miami, FL

Funding: $3.5M (Seed)

What they do: Finnt helps investors get their loved ones involved in decentralized finance investing. In particular, it allows users to link multiple wallets to a central wallet so more savvy investors can get their children, spouse, parents, or relatives to participate without each person having to go through the technologically advanced process of setting up and managing a DeFi wallet.

32. Botin

undefined

5-year search growth: 85%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2020

Location: London, England

Funding: $100K (Seed)

What they do: Similar to US-based Robinhood, Botin is a Latin American focused trading app designed to appeal to retail investors by removing barriers to entry. In particular, they allow crypto trading with no minimums and no commissions. According to their website, they have 10,000 app users.

33. Soon

undefined

5-year search growth: 80%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Salt Lake City, Utah

Funding: $1.5M (Pre-Seed)

What they do: Soon uses automated trading to help users offset the impact of inflation on their idle cash savings. In particular, they directly debit users’ checking accounts on an automated basis (determined by the user), invest those funds, then redeposit investment gains back into the user’s debit account (allowing them to spend their gains). Further, they raised $1M in their first angel round (which was oversubscribed).

34. OnScale

undefined

5-year search growth: 83%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2021

Location: New York, NY

Funding: $23M (Series A)

What they do: Designed to serve high net worth creators, OnScale provides combines big banking services (cash flow mgmt., tax write-offs, etc.) with crypto rails so users can easily convert their traditional income into crypto, and their crypto income into disposable income.

35. Bloom

undefined

5-year search growth: 50%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2021

Location: Newark, Delaware

Funding: $7.3M (Seed)

What they do: Bloom aims to help Sudanese consumers (and eventually all African consumers) offset the impact of inflation by allowing them to convert their local currency into high-yielding US dollar stablecoins. According to LinkedIn, they have 17 employees already.

36. Mintable

undefined

5-year search growth: 200%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: Singapore, Singapore

Funding: $13M (Series A)

What they doMintable is looking to capitalize on the NFT boom by offering a marketplace where users can mint, manage, sell and buy NFTs. The startup is interested in expanding its network onto other blockchains (in addition to its Ethereum-based network.) The startup has attracted the interest of billionaire entrepreneurs such as Mark Cuban.

37. Aleo

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2019

Location: Reno, NV

Funding: $298M (Series B)

What they do: Aleo brands itself as the “Ultimate toolkit for building private applications.” While most work in the blockchain space is made public for transparency's sake, Aleo allows developers to rapidly create, test and deploy dApps while keeping their work (the underlying code) private. Their GitHub has 33 repositories (a hallmark of developer activity) with four of those being updated multiple times per day.

38. Dapper Labs

undefined

5-year search growth: 600%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Funding: $612.5M (Series D)

What they do: Dapper Labs is involved in both NFT production, NFT custody, and blockchain gaming. In particular, they’re the company behind high-profile NFT projects like CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot and UFC Strike. Their most popular project, NBA Top Shot, ranks among the top 2,200 websites in the US.

39. Flashbots

undefined

5-year search growth: 1700%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2020

Location: Cayman Islands

Funding: $30.4M (Series Unknown)

What they do: Flashbots provides education and bot creation tools surrounding the highly complex Miner Extractable Value (MEV) process inherent to most Proof of Stake blockchains. To date, over $675M in MEV has been extracted by Ethereum miners.

40. Yield Guild Games

undefined

5-year search growth: 0%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2020

Location: Quezon, Philippines

Funding: $36.2M (Initial Coin Offering)

What they do: YGG acts as both a facilitator and middleman between, blockchain gamers and investors. In situations where playing a blockchain game requires hundreds if not a thousand dollars or more in upfront capital, guilds like YGG lower (and in some cases eliminate) that barrier by providing gamers with the capital/resources they need to play the game. As one of the more popular guilds, they have 176K Twitter followers and over 100K average monthly website visitors (per SimilarWeb).

41. Chainalysis

undefined

5-year search growth: 338%

Search growth status: Exploding

Year founded: 2014

Location: New York, New York

Funding: $536.6M (Series F)

What they doChainalysis wants to bring some law and accountability to the wild west world of blockchain. The startup has developed an investigation, compliance and risk-management tool that helps solve crypto criminal cases. Chainalysis has managed to sell its tool to companies in over 70 countries.

42. Bitpanda

undefined

5-year search growth: 173%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2014

Location: Vienna, Austria

Funding: $554M (Series C)

What they do: Similar to what Robinhood has done in the US, Bitpanda allows European retail investors to buy and sell stocks, cryptocurrency and precious metals with as few barriers to entry as possible (their minimum to get started is just one euro). According to their About page, they have more than 730 team members and 3.5M users.

43. Rocket Dollar

undefined

5-year search growth: -100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2018

Location: Austin, TX

Funding: $13.5M (Series A)

What they do: In what is a growing financial services trend, Rocket Dollar allows investors to buy and hold alternative assets (including cryptocurrency) in tax-free and tax-deferred retirement accounts. Their services range from $15 to $30 per month with one-time setup fees ranging from $360 to $600.

44. Anchorage Digital

undefined

5-year search growth: 525%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: San Francisco, CA

Funding: $487M (Series D)

What they do: Similar to Fireblocks, Anchorage provides advanced blockchain security solutions to banks and institutions. In particular, they help clients avoid the dangers involved in cold storage while allowing safe access to decentralized borrowing and lending protocols (among other services). Per their website, they currently allow clients to custody 91 different cryptocurrencies.

45. Coinme

undefined

5-year search growth: 356%

Search growth status: Regular

Year founded: 2014

Location: Seattle, WA

Funding: $19.9M (Seed)

What they do: In what originally started as a network of Bitcoin ATMs made possible via partnerships with CoinStar and MoneyGram, Coinme recently launched an app that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrency (including the option to pay via Mastercard and Visa). Nationwide, their ATMs can be found in 15,000+ locations.

46. Coin Metrics

undefined

5-year search growth: 200%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Boston, MA

Funding: $59.4M (Series C)

What they do: Coin Metrics is a cryptocurrency data analysis company focused on providing financial intelligence to institutions. In particular, their services enable clients to better understand, value and use cryptocurrency networks. Their 15+ investment backers include high-profile names like Goldman Sachs and Fidelity.

47. ZenLedger

undefined

5-year search growth: 300%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Bellevue, WA

Funding: $25.9M (Series B)

What they do: ZenLedger provides both retail investors and their CPAs with a suite of tax software designed to keep an accurate record of transactions and taxes owed (a massive pain point in the world of retail crypto investing). Their software supports 400+ centralized exchanges and 100+ decentralized finance exchanges.

48. TaxBit

undefined

5-year search growth: 100%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2017

Location: Draper, UT

Funding: $253.4M (Series B)

What they do: Similar to ZenLedger, TaxBit provides a retail-oriented SaaS platform that automates the tax tracking and reporting process, including helping enterprise clients track their user’s activity while providing accurate 1099s. Between Sep. of 2021 and March 2022, their website traffic quadrupled from 200K monthly visitors to 800K (per SimilarWeb).

49. Fold

undefined

5-year search growth: -40%

Search growth status: Peaked

Year founded: 2014

Location: Atlanta, GA

Funding: $16.3M (Series A)

What they do: Fold provides US consumers with a Bitcoin rewards debit card, allowing customers to choose between flat-rate rewards or the chance to win up to 100x rewards via their “Spin to Win” in-app game. To date, they’ve rewarded users with 166+ Bitcoin, worth more than $7.6M.

Conclusion

So there it is—our list of 49 small blockchain startups looking to impact the crypto industry significantly.

These ventures utilize blockchain technology to offer faster digital asset trading, move money securely and mine cryptocurrencies.