The Cryptonite 300 competition — Web3 companies worth the bet

Somewhere between the raw startups and the Unicorns are the blockchain, AI, and metaverse companies pioneering Web3 and offering the best equity investment ROI potential in the global Silicon Valley.

Anthony Perkins
5 min readMar 30, 2023
Watch Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, spray the streets with grafitti as he runs into a banker. Street art produced by Mister Block.

Introducing the Cryptonite 300

Cryptonite tracks private companies in the blockchain, artificial intelligence, and metaverse industries. To kick off the 2023 Top Private company competition, our team has compiled the following list of companies in the blockchain sector. In two forthcoming posts, we will present our initial take on artificial intelligence and metaverse industry company maps.

Disruptive innovations blow up existing commercial categories and create new ones by convincing consumers they have a faster, cheaper, and more efficient way to get something done. A classic example is the emergence of the online search engine category in the 1990s. Fourteen different VC-backed companies eventually populated the search category, but when the dust cleared, there was one significant survivor — Google.

The free-market reality to date is generally only one or two companies, maybe three, eventually capture well over 90 percent of the market opportunity in each sector, and the rest get acquired or fad away. We believe that by the time we honor the Cryptonite 300 next July, some of these categories of companies will consolidate, and new categories with new leading companies will have been added to the list.

The annual winners will be honored every July at a live broadcast Cryptonite event on the Stanford University campus. In the meantime, we plan to engage in an interactive process with our community to identify new companies and emerging sectors and shuffle, mold, and refine this list to meet the standards we achieved at AlwaysOn.

We would be honored to receive any feedback on emerging sectors, hot company nominations, and any other informed input by posting in the public comments below, sending a confidential email to theeditor@cryptoniteventures.com, or filling out the Top Company nomination form here.

Public Blockchains

Algorand

Token: ALGO Founded 2017 United States.

Aptos Labs

Token: APT Founded: 2021 Palo Alto, CA United States

Avalanche

Token: AVAX Founded: 2020 United States

CARDANO (Siva)

Token: ADA Founded: 2016 Switzerland

Ethereum Foundation

Token: ETH Founded: 2014 Switzerland

Gnosis Chain

Token: GNO Founded: 2015 Gibraltar

Polkadot

Token: DOT Founded: 2016 United States

Polygon

Unicorn + Token: MATIC Founded: 2010 United States

Ripple

Unicorn + Token: XRP Founded: 2012 United States

Solana

Token: SOL Founded: 2017 United States

Tezos

Token: XTZ Founded: 2018 Luxembourg

Crypto Exchanges (Centralized)

Binance Chain

Public Company + Token: BNC

Bitstamp

Founded: 2012 South Korea

Coinbase

Public Company + Founded: 2012 United States

Kraken

Founded: 2011 United States

Dunamu (Upbit)

Founded: 2011 United States

Crypto Exchanges (Decentalized)

Balancer Labs

Token: BAL Founded: 2019 United States

Bancor

Founded: 2016 Switzerland

Bitso

Unicorn + Founded: 2014 Mexico

QuickSwap

Token: QUICK Founded: 2021 India

Uniswap

Token: UNI Founded: 2018 United States

Custody & Wallet Services

MetaMask (Consensys)

Founded: 2016 United States

Cross Chains

Across

Founded: South Korea 2011

O3Swap

Token: Q3 Founded: 2017 Greece

Swim Protocol

Founded: United States

Synapse

Token: SYN Founded: 2012 Russia

Custody & Wallet Services

Anchorage

Unicorn + Token: ANKR + Founded: 2017 United States

BitGo

Unicorn + Founded: 2013 United States

Blockchain.com

Unicorn + Founded: 2011 United Kingdom

Coinbase

Public Company + Founded: 2012 United States

Fireblocks

Unicorn + Founded: 2018 United States

Ledger

Unicorn + Founded: 2014 France

Orion Protocol

Token: OCEAN Founded: 2018 Russia

Data Platforms

Amberdata.io

Founded: 2017 United States

Dune

Unicorn + Founded: 2018 Norway

Gitcoin

Token: GTC Founded: 2017 United States

Ocean Protocol

Token: OCEAN Founded: 2017 Singapore

Decentralized Lending

Aave

Token: ABC Founded: 2017 Cayman Islands

Compound

Token: COMP Founded: 2017 United States

Goldfinch

Token: GF Founded: 2020 United States

Liquity

Token: LQTY Founded: 2020 United States

MapleFinance

Token: MPL Founded: 2020 Australia

TrueFi

Token: TRU Founded: 2021 San Francisco, California, United States

Decentralized Storage

Filecoin

Token: FIL Founded: 2014 United States

Storj

Token: Storj Founded: 2014 Atlanta, GA, United States

Decentralized Yield Generating Services

Zapper

Unicorn + Founded: 2020 Finland

Digital Currencies

Bitcoin

Bitcoin Cash

Dogecoin

LitecoinBitcoin

Founded: 2011 Singapore

Index Services

Infrastructure & Development

Alchemy Shares and Brokerage Firm

Founded: 2017 Taiwan

Ava Labs

Founded: 2018 United States

ConsenSys

Unicorn + Founded: 2014 United States

Enzyme

Token: MLN Founded: San Francisco, United States

fetch.ai

Token: FET Founded: Cambridge, United Kingdom

Optimism

Token: OP Founded: 2019 New York, NY, United States

Institutional Crypto Services

Amber Group

Unicorn Founded: 2015 Singapore

FalconX

Unicorn - Founded: 2018 United States

NYDIG

Unicorn - Founded: 2017 United States

Institutional Staking Providers

Blockdaemon

Unicorn — Founded: 2017 United States

Figment

Unicorn - Founded: 2018 United States

Know Your Customer/Transaction (KYC/KYT)

Chainalysis

Unicorn + Founded: 2014 United States

Civic

Token: CVC Founded: 2015 United States

Liquidity Providers

Ankr

Token: ANKR Founded: 2009 United States

Rocket Pool

Token: RPL Founded: 2017 Australia

StarkWare

Founded: 2018 Israel

NFTs & Gaming

Aavegotchi

Token: GHST Founded: 2020 Singapore

Axie Infinity

Token: AXS Founded: 2018 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Decentraland

Token: MANA Founded: 2015 Carlsbad, CA United States

Forte

Unicorn — Founded: 2018 United States

Immutable (Gods Unchained)

Token: GODS Founded: 2018 Sydney, Australia

OpenSea

Unicorn — Founded: 2018 United States

The Sand Box

Token: SAND Founded: 2018 Saint Julian’s, Malta

Sky Mavis

Unicorn — Founded: 2019 Singapore

Sorare

Unicorn — Founded: 2018 France

Payments

Alchemy Pay

Token: ACH Founded: 2018 Lithuania

Celo

Token: CGLD Founded: 2017 United States

Elly (GoCrypto)

Founded: 2017 Slovenia

MoonPay

Unicorn — Founded: 2018 United States

RegTech & Security

CertiK

Unicorn + Founded: 2017 United States

TaxBit

Unicorn + Founded: 2018 United States

StableCoins

Circle

Unicorn + Founded: 2013 United States

MakerDAO

Token: DAI Founded: 2014 United States

Paxos

Unicorn + Founded: 2012 United States

Tether

Token: USDT Founded: 2014 Hong Kong

Yield Aggregators

Badger

Founded: 2020 United States

Yearn.Finance

Founded: 2020

Other Blockchain

Unstoppable Domains

Founded: 2018 United States

Nominate a Cryptonite 300 Company

We would be honored to receive any feedback on emerging sectors, hot company nominations, and any other informed input by posting in the public comments below, sending a confidential email to theeditor@cryptoniteventures.com, or filling out the Top Company nomination form here.

Most Active Blockchain Risk Investors

Over 2,000 unique professional venture capital and risk investor funds bet on our initial nomination list in the 151 blockchain companies listed above. The list below represents the top 33 venture capital firms and other risk investors ranked by the total number of companies by each investor. This list only includes investors in seven companies or more

We would be honored to receive your Top Cryptonite 300 Web3 company nominations by sending a confidential email to theeditor@cryptoniteventures.com, or filling out the Top Company nomination form here.

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Anthony Perkins
Anthony Perkins

Written by Anthony Perkins

Silicon Valley OG. Founder and Editor of Cryptonite. Previously Founder of Red Herring, AlwaysOn, Churchill Club, SVB Tech Group