Author: qw & Chloexyg, AllianceDAO; Translation: Golden Finance xiaozou
At AllianceDAO, we receive about 3,000 applications per year for our crypto startup accelerator. We collect a lot of data on what the underlying chains of these projects are, what types of products they have, where they are based, etc. Because of the large sample size and our relative indifference to these factors, we are able to form unique insights into the direction of the industry.
1. Public chain
（1）L1
Ethereum remains the dominant ecosystem. Solana is making a comeback after bottoming out in the second half of 2022. It’s probably no coincidence that FTX also crashed in the second half of 2022. Bitcoin is experiencing a resurgence with strong interest in ordinarys, runes, and Bitcoin L2.
(2) Ethereum L2
Let’s look at Ethereum L2 (and sidechains). Over the past three years, optimistic rollup has received a lot of attention. It is worth noting that in the first half of 2024, more than a quarter of startups built on Ethereum L2 chose Base.
2. Products
More and more startups are building infrastructure, DeFi, payments, and AI x Crypto. Among them, infrastructure and AI are aligned with public discourse. But the rise of DeFi and payments may surprise most people, because the public is hardly interested in them. Coincidentally, in our opinion, they are also the only two verticals with real PMF (product market fit) found in the crypto world.
Note that this is an imperfect classification of products, and there is obviously some overlap between these categories. For example, a startup may operate in both the Games and NFT categories, in which case we will assign a weight of 0.5 to both Games and NFT.
3. Geographical distribution
In the first half of 2024, we see the lowest percentage of startups in the U.S. and Canada, and the highest percentage of startups in Asia and Africa. This is likely due to regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. and the growing real-world adoption of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets.
In general, North America, Europe, and Asia remain the top three crypto startup bases, with the number of startups in each region accounting for 1/4 to 1/3 of the total.
4. Founder Background
(1) Large technology companies
The percentage of founders coming from a “big tech” background peaked in 2021 and is now at 30%. Big tech here refers to the tech companies in the S&P 500. The exact definition is not important, but the trend over time is important.
(2) Top universities
Likewise, the percentage of founders graduating from “top schools” peaked in 2021. We define top schools as universities ranked in the top 100 by QS Global Rankings.
(3) Multiple Entrepreneurs
About one in ten entrepreneurs have previously founded a startup.
5. Team composition
(1) Team size
More than half of all startups have only 2 to 5 people. We also happen to believe that this is the optimal size for a pre-PMF startup.
（2）Co-founder
Less than 40% of startups are founded by a single founder. Various studies show that 20-30% of unicorns were founded by a single founder.
(3) Equity division
About half of startups with 2 or more co-founders choose to split equity equally.
(4) Remote work
Nearly three-quarters of startups have adopted a fully remote work model.
