Blockworks Acquires Messari

Blockworks acquired Messari, announced in an off-schedule episode of Empire. Blockworks launched in December 2017 and is in its ninth year, while Messari has operated for eight years focused on providing better data in crypto markets. The deal is described as the capstone of a four-year transition for Blockworks from a media and events business to a data business, and the combined entity claims to hold the largest dataset in crypto by a wide margin.

Messari covers 40,000 assets and its API spans assets, markets, exchange information, news, on-chain and off-chain events, research, stablecoins, protocol data, network data, token unlocks, fundraising, social sentiment, event monitoring, and watch lists. The speakers describe it as probably the strongest crypto data API in the industry. AI agents are identified as the fastest growing customer segment of Messari at the time of acquisition.

The two companies approached the market from opposite directions. Messari started with quantitative data and went broad across data types, while Blockworks started with qualitative information and went deep on a narrow set of on-chain protocols, structuring its research like an equity research shop with analysts covering specific verticals such as lending, including Aave and Morpho. Messari's primary customer for many years was the crypto investor or tradfi fund entering crypto, and it expanded into the enterprise segment over the last two years.

The combined entity is organized around three layers. The first is a disclosure layer called the TTF, built for on-chain assets including real-world assets and on-chain stocks. The second is standardized data and APIs for developers, exchanges, and AI agents. The third is a workflow layer for financial institutions covering monitoring, compliance, diligence, and data licensing. The two primary customer types are issuers of on-chain assets and underwriters of those assets, with the media and events business serving as a distribution layer connecting those two groups.

The speakers identify tokenization as the primary thing working in crypto at the current moment, with stablecoins, treasuries, bonds, and stocks moving on chain. Companies including Stripe, BlackRock, Robinhood, the SEC, and the CFTC are described as beginning to operate on chain. The speakers argue that businesses moving on chain are currently blocked by an inability to monitor assets, track users on chain, and understand on-chain financials, which the combined entity aims to solve. The GENIUS Act has passed and clarity legislation is described as in late stages, with US regulators now described as trying to foster the industry rather than ban it.

Trust in crypto markets is described as severely damaged. Founders regularly overstate revenue by ten times, behavior the speakers note would constitute a criminal act for a public company CEO but currently carries no consequences in crypto. The speakers argue that the missing link for accurate disclosures is punitive consequences such as lawsuits or jail, and that calling out bad behavior as a strategy has not worked over ten years.

The speakers argue the mental model that crypto would disrupt or replace finance was wrong, and the correct model is that crypto makes existing financial infrastructure operate better. Traditional ratings and data businesses such as Moody's, described as an eighty billion dollar business, and S&P, described as a one hundred twenty billion dollar business, required enormous headcount because data was not digital or structured, a constraint that does not apply to crypto where all data is already digital, structured, real-time, transparent, and public. Combining on-chain data with AI should allow live-streamed financial data queryable via large language models, replacing manual analyst work such as matching footnotes in quarterly filings, and LLMs are described as capable of scoring bond issuances at ten percent of the cost instantly if information lives on chain. The speakers predict fragmented capital markets data businesses in traditional finance will be consolidated and that an AI-native, on-chain-native platform could outcompete legacy incumbents, while acknowledging it will take ten years to know whether the strategy has succeeded.