Blockworks Acquires Messari

Blockworks acquired Messari, announced on a Thursday outside the normal Empire podcast release schedule. Blockworks was founded in December 2017 and has operated for roughly eight and a half years, while Messari has spent eight years focused on providing better data in crypto markets, passing through several leaders before being most recently run by Ran.

The two companies approached the market from opposite directions before combining. Messari pursued a broad Bloomberg-for-crypto aggregator strategy covering 40,000 assets across APIs for markets, exchange information, news, on-chain and off-chain events, research, stablecoins, protocol data, network data, token unlocks, fundraising, social sentiment, and watch lists. Blockworks counter-positioned by going very deep on a narrow set of protocols organized by vertical, with lending analysts covering protocols like Aave and Morpho exclusively. Messari started with quantitative information while Blockworks started with qualitative information, and Blockworks has been transitioning from a media and events business to a data business over roughly four years. The acquisition is described as the capstone of that evolution, giving the combined entity what the speakers call the largest data set in crypto by a wide margin, spanning on-chain, market, and fundraising data.

The combined entity serves two primary customer groups. The first is issuers of on-chain assets, including protocols, chains, foundations, applications, stablecoin issuers, RWA issuers, and prediction markets. The second is underwriters of on-chain assets, including investors, regulators, exchanges, custodians, fintechs, payment providers, and brokerages. AI agents are described as the fastest growing customer base Messari had at the time of the recording.

The speakers identify the most important trend in crypto as tokenizing assets including stablecoins and RWAs and rebuilding capital markets on chain, encompassing stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and tokens on public blockchains. Companies like Stripe, BlackRock, and Robinhood are beginning to operate on chain but are blocked by an inability to monitor assets, track users on chain, and understand on-chain financials. The three-layer stack being built to address this consists of disclosures, standardized data, and tools for financial institutions to comply, monitor, and conduct diligence.

A core problem the combined company aims to solve is the breakdown of trust in crypto markets. Founders regularly post revenue overstated by 10x, behavior that would be criminal for a public company CEO but is currently accepted in crypto. One speaker noted personally avoiding buying tokens when unable to verify where metrics are coming from or when incentive campaigns may cause the token to dump 90 percent. The speakers argue that calling out bad behavior without consequences has failed as a strategy after ten years, and that consequences such as lawsuits or jail are the missing link for enforcing accurate information disclosure.

Blockworks and Messari are building a Token Taxonomy Framework called TTF to establish disclosure standards for on-chain assets including RWAs. There is currently significant flexibility in how protocol revenue and margin are described in crypto, without agreed standards. The speakers argue standardized disclosures are necessary for the industry to progress and that LLM-based credit scoring of on-chain bond disclosures could be done at ten percent of the cost of traditional credit ratings agencies and done instantly. Moody's is described as an approximately 80 billion dollar business and S&P as an approximately 120 billion dollar business. The speakers acknowledge those incumbents have roughly a 100-year head start but believe an AI-native on-chain information platform can compete because all crypto data is already digital, structured, real-time, and public.

The speakers describe the current moment as requiring scaling and industry maturation rather than far-out-of-the-box innovation. US regulators and policymakers are now trying to foster the industry rather than ban it, and GENIUS Act clarity is described as in late stages. The speakers note that crypto no longer has a regulatory boogeyman like Gary Gensler to blame and has not yet produced competitive assets that people broadly want to buy, with tokens being down while AI stocks are up hurting perception of the industry. Both speakers describe themselves as more optimistic about Blockworks and the industry than they have ever been.