Blockworks Acquires Messari

Blockworks acquired Messari and announced the deal on an off-schedule Thursday release, framing it as the capstone of Blockworks' evolution from a media and events business into a data company. Blockworks was founded in December 2017 and has operated for roughly eight and a half years, while Messari spent approximately eight years building data infrastructure for crypto markets. Messari was founded by Ryan and Dan, later led by Eric, and most recently run by Ran.

The strategic logic centers on combining depth with breadth. Blockworks had counter-positioned against Messari's broad Bloomberg-for-crypto approach by going deep on a narrow set of protocols, with dedicated analysts covering assets like Aave and Morpho, but needed greater data breadth to expand its product and investor relations offering. 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 watchlists. Blockworks describes itself as now holding the largest dataset in crypto by a wide margin.

The acquisition is framed around a shared mission of standardizing data and increasing trust in on-chain markets. Jason argued that trust in crypto has broken down, with founders routinely overstating revenue by 10x in ways that would be criminal for a public company CEO but currently carry no consequences in crypto. He said ten years of calling out bad behavior without legal penalties has failed, and that the missing link is punitive consequences such as lawsuits or jail for misrepresenting information. Messari's founding mission of standardizing data was described as extremely similar to Blockworks' own mission.

The combined entity is building a three-layer stack consisting of disclosures, standardized data, and tools for financial institutions to comply, monitor, and conduct diligence. The Token Taxonomy Framework serves as the disclosure layer, with plans to extend it to on-chain stocks and real-world assets. Blockworks describes two primary customer types as issuers of on-chain assets, including protocols, chains, foundations, stablecoin issuers, and RWA issuers, and underwriters of on-chain assets, including investors, regulators, exchanges, custodians, fintechs, payment providers, and brokerages.

Jason identified tokenization as the primary thing working in crypto right now, with stablecoins, treasuries, bonds, and stocks moving on chain and companies including Stripe, BlackRock, Robinhood, the SEC, and the CFTC beginning to operate on chain. He argued the correct mental model is not that crypto disrupts finance but that crypto makes finance work better, and that the winning use case is rebuilding capital markets on chain across stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and tokens on public blockchains. He noted that traditional institutions are currently blocked from operating on chain by their inability to monitor assets, track users on chain, and understand on-chain financials, which is precisely the gap the combined business aims to fill.

AI is described as a major accelerant for the combined entity, with AI agents identified as the fastest growing customer segment of Messari at the time of the announcement. Jason argued that LLM-based credit scoring of on-chain bond issuances could be done at 10 percent of the cost of traditional ratings agencies and delivered instantly. He cited Moody's at approximately 80 billion dollars and S&P at approximately 120 billion dollars in market value as legacy incumbents that AI-native, on-chain-native platforms could outcompete, noting that traditional ratings and data businesses required enormous headcount that crypto's already digital, structured, real-time, and public data makes unnecessary. The vision for investor relations is live-streamed on-chain data queryable via large language models rather than static periodic filings.

Jason acknowledged the strategy will take roughly ten years to validate and noted a current limitation: even with perfect on-chain data it is impossible to determine whether a DEX volume spike reflects genuine product success or an incentive campaign without accompanying disclosure requirements. He said the Genius Act is in late stages and that regulatory clarity is coming. Both hosts described themselves as more optimistic about Blockworks and the broader industry than at any prior point, attributing that optimism partly to US regulators now actively trying to foster the crypto industry rather than restrict it.