Messari

Messari is a crypto market intelligence company that sells research, asset and onchain data, and AI tools to funds, exchanges, protocols and developers. Founded in 2018, it was acquired by Blockworks in June 2026 and now trades as "Messari by Blockworks". For the Solana ecosystem it is best known for its quarterly State of Solana reports, a dedicated Solana data portal, and an API that AI agents can pay for per request in USDC on Solana.

What Messari does

Messari's business sits in two layers: analyst-written research and a structured data platform underneath it. Its API documentation lists coverage of price, volume and market cap for more than 40,000 assets, onchain metrics for more than 25 layer-1 and layer-2 networks (Ethereum and Solana are the named examples), more than 200 protocols and more than 30 stablecoins. Further endpoints cover spot and futures exchange data, token unlock and vesting schedules, a fundraising database of funding rounds, M&A deals and investors, and aggregated news from more than 500 sources with summaries.

Newer product lines are built around monitoring and AI. The docs describe Signals (social data and sentiment tracking), Intel (event monitoring with curated summaries), Monitoring (categorised developments and filtered views), Watchlists, and an AI API that exposes Messari AI, the company's research assistant, to outside applications.

On the web app, an independent 2026 review by Crypto Adventure describes a free Basic tier with limited screeners and a single watchlist, and a paid Enterprise tier that adds full research access, alerts, fundraising data and API access. Enterprise pricing is not published and is quoted on request.

Research and Solana coverage

Messari's research desk publishes sector reports, an annual "Crypto Theses" outlook, and recurring chain reports. Its State of Solana series tracks Solana's financial, network and ecosystem activity each quarter across DeFi, staking, DePIN, payments and other categories. The Q1 2026 edition, as reported by Yahoo Finance, argued that AI agent activity on Solana moved from experimentation to measurable economic output during the quarter, and pointed to the network's support for both x402 and Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol.

Messari also runs a Solana Portal, a Solana-specific front end to its data. It includes SOL and ecosystem token prices, TVL, network metrics, token unlocks, fundraising, news, research, a project landscape, and "mindshare" sentiment analytics. Messari offers similar portals to other communities through what it calls protocol services.

Pay-per-request data on Solana

The most direct link between Messari and Solana infrastructure is its adoption of x402, the HTTP-native payment standard co-developed by Coinbase. According to Messari's x402 documentation, a client can call Messari endpoints without an account or API key. An unauthenticated request returns HTTP 402 Payment Required with payment details; the client then signs a USDC transfer on Solana mainnet or Base, and Messari's gateway verifies the payment and serves the original request.

More than 60 endpoints are available this way. Listed prices run from free for simple listings to $1.00 per request for granular market time series, with Messari AI chat completions at $0.25 per call. The model is aimed at autonomous agents that need to buy data without a human setting up a subscription. Coverage of the company's 2026 leadership change also noted an integration with AgentCash, an x402 wallet service, that lets users run Messari AI analysis from a terminal and pay onchain.

Open-source and developer tools

Messari's GitHub organisation hosts its best-known open-source work, a library of standardised subgraphs for indexing protocol data (over 500 stars), alongside a Rust substreams repository, a TypeScript SDK (MessariKit), API cookbooks, and a "skills" repository that packages the API as skill files for AI coding agents such as Claude Code.

History and leadership

Ryan Selkis founded Messari in 2018 after roles at Digital Currency Group and CoinDesk, positioning it as a crypto-native rival to traditional financial data providers such as Bloomberg, according to MrWeb. In September 2022 the company raised $35 million in a Series B led by Brevan Howard Digital, with existing investors including Point72 Ventures, Galaxy and Coinbase Ventures. The round valued Messari at about $300 million.

Selkis resigned as CEO in July 2024 after a series of political posts on X, and chief revenue officer Eric Turner took over. In March 2026 Diran Li, Messari's long-serving chief technology officer, became CEO and announced layoffs as the company repositioned itself as an AI-first provider for institutions, Parameter reported.

In June 2026 Blockworks announced it had acquired Messari, describing the deal as combining an investor-side data platform with Blockworks' issuer-side disclosure and investor relations products. Bitcoin Magazine reported a price of about $10 million, far below the 2022 valuation, with Li joining Blockworks' senior leadership. Messari's X account and website now carry the "Messari by Blockworks" name, and the research team continues to publish reports under the Messari brand.

Where it fits in the Solana ecosystem

Messari is not a Solana protocol and has no token. Its relevance to Solana users is as a data and research source: its quarterly State of Solana reports track the network's activity over time, its Solana Portal aggregates ecosystem metrics in one place, and its x402 gateway lets Solana-based agents and applications buy crypto data per request in USDC.