Messari

Messari is a crypto research and market intelligence platform that provides institutional-grade data, analyst-verified research, and AI-assisted workflows to investors, protocols, and developers navigating the digital asset landscape.

Origins and Mission

Founded in 2018 by Ryan Selkis, Messari was built on the premise that crypto markets suffered from a transparency deficit — unreliable data, inconsistent terminology, and a lack of structured, independent analysis. Its stated mission has been to provide market intelligence that enables high-conviction participation in crypto, modeled loosely on the role Morningstar plays in traditional securities markets.

The platform grew through a combination of open data initiatives and premium research subscriptions. In 2022, Messari raised a $35 million Series B led by Brevan Howard's crypto arm at a roughly $300 million valuation, reaching its commercial and research peak.

Core Products and Data Infrastructure

Messari's platform covers five primary data domains:

Market Intelligence. Price, trading volume, and market capitalization data for over 40,000 crypto assets, alongside exchange data covering spot volumes, futures activity, and open interest across major venues.

Onchain Analytics. Network and protocol metrics across 25+ blockchain networks and 200+ protocols. Users can track transaction fees, active address counts, total value locked, and other standardized on-chain indicators.

News and Signals. Content aggregated from more than 500 news sources with asset-level tagging, plus sentiment and narrative tracking across crypto sectors and market themes.

Financial and Fundraising Data. Specialized endpoints covering stablecoin metrics, token vesting schedules, and a fundraising intelligence layer spanning rounds, M&A deals, and investor relationships. This layer has become one of Messari's more differentiated datasets for institutions evaluating early-stage exposure.

Research Reports. Analyst-authored diligence reports using standardized templates across 200+ protocols, designed to provide comparable risk scoring and sector context. Reports auto-refresh weekly and are described by Messari as audit-grade. Monitoring capabilities cover 60+ event types — exploits, upgrades, governance actions, token unlocks — delivered via Slack, email, and API.

The platform also emphasizes API parity: every data point visible in the Messari web interface is accessible programmatically, making it practical for teams building internal tools or integrating crypto intelligence into existing workflows.

AI Integration

Messari has invested heavily in an AI layer it positions as a co-pilot for crypto research. Messari AI is trained on approximately 40 terabytes of proprietary data, drawing on market data, onchain metrics, token unlock schedules, fundraising records, research reports, news from 500+ sources, and social signals. The product offers an OpenAI-compatible API with support for the Vercel AI SDK, targeting developers who want to embed crypto intelligence into their own applications or automate portions of their research pipeline.

Institutional Clients and Protocol Coverage

Messari counts Coinbase, Robinhood, and BNY Mellon among its data clients. On the protocol side, more than 130 projects contract with Messari to produce independent research, build data dashboards, and distribute disclosures to institutional investors. This service line — sometimes called investor relations infrastructure — has become central to the company's positioning, particularly as institutional capital has sought standardized disclosure from crypto protocols.

Solana Research Coverage

Messari has been one of the more active independent research shops covering the Solana ecosystem. The company publishes quarterly "State of Solana" reports that track financial, network, and ecosystem metrics — active addresses, fee revenue, DeFi TVL, staking dynamics, and developer activity — across successive quarters. A dedicated Solana portal at solana.messari.io aggregates this coverage alongside event recaps and focused reports on subsectors like payments, DePIN, and real-world assets.

Solana's DePIN ecosystem has featured prominently in Messari's broader annual "Crypto Theses" report, which has identified Solana as a hub for projects including Helium, Hivemapper, Render, and Nosana. For Solana stakeholders seeking third-party quantitative benchmarks on network performance and ecosystem growth, Messari's quarterly reports have served as a widely cited reference.

Leadership Transitions and Acquisition by Blockworks

The period from 2024 to 2026 brought significant disruption to Messari's operations. Founder Ryan Selkis resigned in 2024. CEO Eric Turner subsequently led the company through a pivot toward an AI-first strategy before also stepping down in early 2026 alongside a round of layoffs. CTO Diran Li assumed the CEO role as the company refocused.

Messari shelved its flagship annual Mainnet conference and entered 2026 in what observers described as a significantly diminished competitive position relative to its 2022 peak.

In June 2026, Blockworks — a crypto data and media company founded by Jason Yanowitz and Michael Ippolito — acquired Messari for a reported sum exceeding $10 million. The price represented a steep discount to the $300 million valuation Messari had commanded at its Series B four years earlier. The combined entity now operates as "Messari by Blockworks."

Blockworks has framed the acquisition as a move to build the crypto equivalent of Morningstar: a unified system of record for onchain assets, combining Messari's data depth and API infrastructure with Blockworks' investor relations and disclosure products. Post-acquisition product priorities include expanding data coverage, strengthening APIs, improving IR software for protocols, and integrating more research and ratings capabilities across the combined platform.

Relevance to the Solana Ecosystem

For Solana participants — validators, protocols, liquidity providers, and institutional investors — Messari's platform is most directly relevant as a source of independent, standardized research. Its quarterly Solana state reports provide benchmarks that protocol teams and investors use to contextualize on-chain data. Its fundraising intelligence layer tracks capital flows into Solana projects. And its onchain analytics API surfaces Solana network metrics in a normalized format alongside comparable data from other chains, useful for competitive analysis and ecosystem positioning.

The Blockworks acquisition brings Messari's data infrastructure under the same umbrella as Blockworks' existing crypto research, events, and media operations, with the stated goal of building disclosure and data standards that the broader onchain market currently lacks.