Web3 infrastructure provider Alchemy snaps up Chainshot, its first acquisition

Mergers & Acquisitions • August 25, 2022, 9:22AM EDT
The Block

Quick Take

  • Crypto infrastructure company Alchemy has announced its first acquisition, swooping in on ChainShot. 
  • The news follows a $200 million raise in February which valued Alchemy at over $10 billion and recent integrations with Polkadot and Solana.

Alchemy, a web3 infrastructure platform backed by the likes of a16z, Coatue and Lightspeed Ventures, has announced its first acquisition, acquiring Ethereum developer education platform ChainShot. 

ChainShot offers live and instructor-led Ethereum developer boot camps, according to a statement shared with The Block Thursday. The deal will allow Alchemy to build upon its education offerings which include its Web3 University. 

"As for next steps, our goal is to make the integration of ChainShot’s programs and ours as smooth and seamless for students as possible," said the statement. "We’re still ironing out how the pieces will come together, but one thing is certain: all of ChainShot’s course content that previously cost upwards of $3,000 will be 100% free." 

Founded in 2017 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau, Alchemy's business model relies on offering application programming interfaces, or APIs, to companies looking to build out their blockchain services. These include APIs for node infrastructure, transaction history and NFT functionality among other use cases. 

APIs allow businesses to more simply access each others' systems and Alchemy's have been used historically by crypto-native firms such as OpenSea, Dapper Labs, and Axie Infinity. Recently it has onboarded newcomers to the crypto space such as Meta, Shopify and Adobe as interest in web3 swelled. In the last few months, it's added Solana and Polkadot integration, amplifying its plethora of compatible blockchains. 

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The company most recently raised $200 million in a round led by Lightspeed and Silverlake at a $10.2 billion valuation in February of this year, only four months after it closed a Series C funding round. At the time, the company told The Block that it had yet to tap into reserves it built from previous raises. 
 
The announcement comes amid a period of turbulence for crypto companies looking to pursue M&A opportunities. Last week, crypto and stocks investment company Robinhood more than halved its acquisition offer for UK fintech Ziglu.
 
This followed news on the same week that investment firm Galaxy Digital had terminated its acquisition of crypto custodian BitGo and crypto miner Prime Blockchain and 10X SPAC canceled its $1.25 billion merger deal. Today, Thailand’s SCB abandoned plans to buy crypto exchange Bitkub in a $500 million deal. 

 

Blockchain M&A transactions and dollar volume by year. Image: The Block Research

Despite the recent gyrations, crypto M&A deals continue to be on pace for a record year, according to a Q2 report from The Block Research. 


© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

Tom is a deals reporter at The Block covering venture capital, fundraises, fintech and M&A. Before joining, he was an editorial intern at the FT-backed platform Sifted where he reported on neobanks, payment firms and blockchain startups. You can reach him by email at [email protected] or Telegram @tommatsuda.