LeadBlock Partners reveals its annual report, “Enterprise Blockchain 2021” and offers an analysis of how start-ups are driving adoption of blockchain by the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions
London, Thursday, November 25th – The venture capital fund Leadblock Partners, specialised in supporting blockchain and digital asset startups, unveils its “Enterprise Blockchain 2021” report.
The report is based on a survey and interviews from 250+ startups and 20+ experts in the blockchain and digital asset field. It has collected 10,000+ key data points on how start-ups are driving adoption of blockchain by the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions. Hear from Bitpanda, UNICEF, ING and the World Trade Organisation to name a few.
Through this study, LeadBlock Partners reveals three main insights:
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Unprecedented acceleration of growth & funding for start-ups, large rounds to come
The enterprise blockchain space has seen an unprecedented acceleration with revenues up 3.5x year on year. This growth is driven by seasoned founders leading solid teams, who are selling mature products to educated businesses ready to adopt blockchain solutions.
Talents have continued to flow into the sector. Founders have on average 22 years of work experience and 20% of them come from only 10 leading companies such as IBM, Goldman Sachs or Amazon.
With this backdrop, investment is soaring and the virtuous circle of revenue growth and funding is accelerating. Surveyed start-ups have a total funding need of €1bn for the next 18 months, 3x year on year. We expect to see many large rounds in 2022, with Series A, B and beyond as investors double down on success stories.
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Institutional digital adoption at tipping point, an opportunity up for grabs
The crypto market emerged from the pandemic as an attractive asset class, and saw material capital inflows from institutions over the past 18 months. With a total market value of $2.5T and $15B+ recently injected by institutions, the crypto market is at a tipping point.
We discuss with founders and C-level executives of top digital asset start-ups such as Bitpanda, Finoa and BlockFi how institutional demand has ramped up and what infrastructure, products and services they are building to facilitate adoption. A lot of tech still needs to be built, ranging from execution, custody, credit solutions, data providers, KYC and analytics. We expect more VC funding to fuel this infrastructure which will support the next leg of crypto market growth.
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Opportunities abound for all
Protocols: Ethereum, the Hyperledger suite and Corda still dominate with a c.65% market share. However the race isn’t won as most start-ups are protocol agnostic and 30% of them are actively looking to switch protocols.
Start-ups: The adoption of digital assets and blockchain has clearly passed the early adopter phase, now is the time to scale for established start-ups. Having said that there are still many opportunities in financial services (1/3rd of start-ups) and we have only started exploring the myriad of potential use cases across other sectors such as food, healthcare, ESG etc.
Investors: The combination of strong growth, experienced founders, appetite for blockchain and digital assets makes the sector an appealing one for investors. We expect capital to flow into the sectors in 2022 both from specialist funds and generalists.
Jean Marc Puel, Founding Partner at LeadBlock Partners, comments, “This report demonstrates that the adoption of blockchain by the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions has now reached a tipping point. We see start-ups accelerating across the board and appetite for adoption reaching record levels. 2022 will see continued growth of funding and round sizes!”
Download the full report “Enterprise Blockchain 2021” here
About LeadBlock Partners
LeadBlock Partners is a European venture capital fund capturing investment opportunities in the fast growing Blockchain & Digital Assets ecosystem. The fund focuses on B2B start-ups solving digitization challenges across industries with key expertise in Financial Services, Healthcare, Agriculture & Food, Energy & Renewables and Aerospace & Defense.
