Surfacing the Signal on the Blockchain: Our Investment in Nansen

Not since the internet has there been an innovation as transformational as the blockchain. Over the past few years, many of the developments surrounding blockchains have been centered on financial applications, driving a huge amount of growth in decentralized financial (DeFi) protocols, currently holding ~$100B in TVL. In addition, what’s been really exciting over the past year is the way in which crypto has permeated non-financial applications and started to impact broader consumer areas, such as fantasy sports, digital collectibles, and gaming. In many ways, 2021 can be seen as a breakthrough year for crypto as the applications flourished, reaching mainstream awareness

But with the explosion in activity in crypto, including new areas like NFTs and DeFi, transaction information has become extremely fragmented across different projects, exchanges, and chains. Consequently, there’s a huge need and opportunity for a trusted single source of truth when it comes to insights and data for crypto market participants, individuals and institutions alike. 

Enter blockchain data analytics platform Nansen. Their product brings together public on-chain data with a proprietary database of activity across 100M+ blockchain wallets to provide real-time, actionable insights for investors and financial institutions on the expanding blockchain landscape.

When we met Nansen’s founding team Alex Svanevik (CEO), Evgeny Medvedev (CTO), and Lars Krogvig (Chief Data Engineer), it was clear that their deep experience in data and crypto, ambition, and vision would be a driving force for Nansen to become the go-to platform for investors and businesses to gain competitive insights into emerging crypto trends. Between them, the founders have more than 25 years of experience working in data science and engineering. Evgeny is also one of the world’s experts on analyzing blockchain data, having created Blockchain ETL. After years of working in this field, they realized that everyone they interacted with wanted to know more about the wallets transacting on-chain. And so they started building Nansen in 2019 and the platform’s growth since then has been meteoric. 

The Nansen platform went live in April 2020 and on the first day of launch, they’d already signed up their first paying customer. A month later, they’d made a few hundred dollars in revenues. A year later, Nansen’s revenue had increased by more than 1,000x and the team had grown from three to 30. Since June this year, the company has grown its user base by more than 400% and has hired 55 new team members across 28 countries. Companies using Nansen include retail investors as well as leading institutional investors such as Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, Genesis Block Ventures, Not3Lau Capital, Polychain, YBS Capital, and Acheron Trading. In addition, Nansen is used by leading crypto teams such as Sky Mavis, Polygon, and Lido, and the platform has achieved more than a 20x increase in subscribers in the last year. 

The impressive traction the Nansen team has seen so far is only the beginning, as they’re set to accelerate the company’s international expansion, increase their data coverage, and continue building a world-class product that enables investors and businesses to explore the latest crypto signals and make more informed decisions. We’re thrilled to be joining Alex, Evgeny, Lars, and the Nansen team on the next phase of their journey as they make the future of finance a reality!