Messari: Reliable information for the tokenized world
Fabric Ventures is excited to back the Messari team in their latest $4M round — official announcement by Messari.
Folks forget the legal battles that took place concerning the use, management and development of the Internet to ensure that it could be the neutral global utility, something that nonetheless it barely manages to be today. With the rise of networks of smart or digital contracts and native digital assets we should be prepared for a much more acute wave of legal contention and debate. Whatever the ultimate outcome, the bedrock for making those arguments fruitful clearly must include an agreed set of data structures to frame the continuous aggregation of ‘audited’ data concerning the emerging array of coins, tokens and other Web 3.0 assets and applications.
In the United States, most public companies, foreign and domestic, are required to file periodic statements and reports (e.g. 10-K, 10-Q, see investopedia) through EDGAR and Bloomberg for private companies. With EDGAR, these documents are accessible by everyone, for free, and there are equivalent systems available in other countries, such as Companies House and DueDil in the United Kingdom.
The decentralised nature of this emerging asset class creates a challenge to enforce disclosure standards at a worldwide scale. At the same time, we firmly believe that reliable sources of information and comprehensive research tools are necessary, especially in a fast moving digital assets industry. In fact, the need was so clear to us we had considered building around years ago. We even had a name for it: Tokenberg. Fortunately, we met Ryan Selkis, a crypto provocateur of the finest kind, and it was evident that he was the best person to assemble the right team to build it successfully ; and we have been glad to be part of their journey ever since.
Messari’s Transparency Registry
Messari is building an open and free-to-access crypto asset data library, providing high-quality, standardised project disclosures. One can expect to find: Whitepapers, Initial sale documents, Core team biographies, Roadmap updates, Social media posts, Vesting/inflation rates, Third-party audits, Internal trading policies, Monetary policy chances, and more.
In addition to aggregating disclosures, Messari has launched compliance tools and an enterprise API for funds and exchanges — you can learn more about the API offering here. Also watch this space for extremely exciting developments in Messari’s product roadmap.
Messari Pro
Messari has produced exceptional industry coverage and in-depth analysis, offering market-leading newsletters, insightful weekly research pieces, and much more:
- Messari Pro — one month free trial available
- Messari Pro Research
- Messari Newsletter
- Messari Podcasts
- Messari Board
Investment Thesis
Messari has built a strong brand as an advocate of transparency and accountability. Their open and free-to-access database is likely to become the industry standard for reporting and disclosures, and a go-to place for all market participants. We expect Messari will continue growing in the decentralised ecosystem and attracting most projects in the space ; and we encourage every quality project to do so here.
In addition to the registry, they have managed to assemble an exceptional team of researchers that consistently produce high quality content, available through Messari Pro.
Ryan himself is central to our rationale for investing in Messari. His original lens back at the opening of the last decade was one of scepticism concerning the long term viability of fiat currency and he has grown to embrace the early stage experiments in token-economics now taking place in a number of Web 3.0 applications. He is a man who has worked intensely to get where he is now and is not scared of ruffling feathers as he scales his enterprise. He leads example from the helm, using his years of graft to plan smartly but always prepared to put in the hours of grit that are the only way in which entrepreneurs master the risk inherent in their ventures.
While we are still early in the journey of this new wave of computing that we call Web 3.0, it is clear Messari has already found product-market fit. As digital assets grow and more applications are built around them, the need for a trustworthy source of information will only increase. They have assembled an exceptional team that has shown its capacity to grow during a bear market. We are excited to see what they build next and think you should be also.
