ether.fi Ventures

The shift in the crypto fundraising landscape the past 6 months has been insane. Crypto VCs used to have to constantly be networking/writing/podcasting/going on spaces/promoting your thesis/getting on 10 deal flow calls a week, to get into good deals...now it's literally enough to just have capital to write checks. Deals are being pushed rather than dug out. Inbound if people know you have money is at an all-time high. Most firms are either 1) Out of money 2) Moved to Series A and beyond or 3) Fundraising (with no success). Deals that used to close in 2-3 weeks now close in 2-3 months. Firms with questionable business models or copy pasta of the latest trend are getting zero primary or follow-on funding (Good news!). There are now realistically <20 firms writing checks in pre-seed/seed. VCs basically have the pick of any deal they want, with more time to do DD. IMHO 25/26 are going to be historic vintages for those who stick around.

The shift in the crypto fundraising landscape the past 6 months has been insane. Crypto VCs used to have to constantly be networking/writing/podcasting/going on spaces/promoting your thesis/getting on 10 deal flow calls a week, to get into good deals...now it's literally enough to just have capital to write checks. Deals are being pushed rather than dug out. Inbound if people know you have money is at an all-time high. Most firms are either 1) Out of money 2) Moved to Series A and beyond or 3) Fundraising (with no success). Deals that used to close in 2-3 weeks now close in 2-3 months. Firms with questionable business models or copy pasta of the latest trend are getting zero primary or follow-on funding (Good news!). There are now realistically <20 firms writing checks in pre-seed/seed. VCs basically have the pick of any deal they want, with more time to do DD. IMHO 25/26 are going to be historic vintages for those who stick around.

0/ Clear signing is now live. An open standard to end blind signing, making human-readable transactions default. This effort brings a major UX and Security upgrade to transaction signing on Ethereum.

Last week, Ethereum core contributors gathered in Svalbard for the Soldøgn interop: a week long event focused on hardening Glamsterdam implementations to scale Ethereum securely ☀️ Read the full recap, including their candidate post-fork gas limit, below:

Crypto card spending is the next big trend: Crypto card spending volume has surged +500% since September 2024, now running at $600 million per month. As a result, stablecoin-linked payment cards are now one of the fastest growing businesses on the blockchain, with 90% of transactions captured by Visa, $V. Visa's strategy has centered around partnering with emerging infrastructure providers which reduces reliance on traditional sponsor banks. The growth comes amid the launch of Jupiter Global which returns 4-10% cash back to crypto cards and has seen +660% MoM volume growth in April. Crypto card adoption is growing.