DeFi venture funding deal activity fell in May, data shows

Decentralized finance-focused venture deal activity slumped in May, according to data gathered by The Block Research.

Funding in terms of a dollar amount came in at $176.30 million for the sector in May, its lowest amount since September 2021.

Further, DeFi wasn’t one of the two most popular deal types, according to John Dantoni, an analyst at The Block Research. May represented the first time this has occurred since July 2020.

Funding hasn’t entirely dried up in the sector, however. 

There were 12 funding raises over $10 million for DeFi and Web3 in April. Some notable examples in 2022 include ox Labs, a decentralized exchange protocol, which raised $70 million in Series B funding, and Tribal, a B2b financing platform bridging TradFi and DeFi, which raised $60 million. BloXroute, a firm built for DeFi trading, raised $70 million led by SoftBank in April. In May, Certora, which provides security analysis for smart contracts, raised $36 million in a Series B led by Jump Crypto. 

Despite these deals, the drop in DeFi funding is a stark contrast to the summer of 2020, often referred to as “DeFi Summer,” which marked billions locked into DeFi applications and protocols, according to previous research complied by The Block. 

Summer of DeFi notable deals.