In this week’s recap, we are analyzing Bitcoin price and annual and monthly venture funding activity to provide context as we enter 2023.

Networks & Protocols

This year, Bitcoin dropped 65% and ended the year at around $16,540.

Similarly, ETH also decreased about 67% and ended the year around $1.2k. As the new year starts, the Ethereum community expects significant progress in the network, including Beacon Chain withdrawals and EIP-4844: Proto-Danksharding.

The relay market showed improved dynamism, following the same pattern over the past weeks. Flashbot’s predominance decreased to the lower seventies from as high as 81%.

Venture Activity

Highlights – 2022

Projects raised a total of $21.3 billion in 2022, making it the second-largest year for fundraising since 2014.

The data suggests that venture capitalists completed 684 funding rounds in the year. Although this is a much lower activity level than 2021, it still remained the second most active year for transactions.

Highlights – December 2022

December indicated the third consecutive month of decreased total funds raised by projects. The total of $719.9 million in December was the lowest monthly amount this year.

Nevertheless, December did not signify the least number of funding rounds, with the 46 rounds reflecting the third lowest in the year.

Weekly Fundraises

This part illustrates our regular analysis for the week ending December 25th, 2022 (note that data was not available for the other days of December).

The majority of the investment rounds in the last week of December were Seed rounds, with only one equity raise.

Investors focused on infrastructure funding, and interestingly, DeFi investments remained equally active.