CoinGecko buys NFT data startup Zash in its first acquisition

Crypto data aggregator CoinGecko has made its first acquisition by purchasing NFT data startup Zash.

CoinGecko plans to incorporate Zash's NFT data into its platform by the second quarter of next year, the firm said Wednesday. The deal terms weren't disclosed; Web3 Studios served as the financial advisor for the transaction, CoinGecko said.

Zash was founded in 2021 at Entrepreneur First, a European startup accelerator backed by veterans including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Stripe co-founder John Collison. Zash initially created a social investing app "verified by real on-chain and broker data" but pivoted to NFT data due to a lack of reliable and accurate blockchain data, specifically for NFTs. Zash today provides NFT data across 87 marketplaces on several blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Bitcoin Ordinals.

"After evaluating all existing NFT data providers in the space, Zash stands out as unparalleled," TM Lee, co-founder and CEO of CoinGecko, said in a statement. "Within 3 years, they have built a remarkable product with the most comprehensive NFT data coverage in the market, and commercialized with top tier clients with a lean team."

The Zash team will join CoinGecko as part of the acquisition. CoinGecko co-founder and COO Bobby Ong declined to disclose the size of the team, but LinkedIn shows Zash employs up to 10 members. Ong also declined to comment on the size of the deal, but Zash was at a pre-seed funding round level in February of this year when it raised an undisclosed amount from some investors, including Cogitent Ventures and WWVentures, according to Crunchbase data.

CoinGecko was founded in 2014 and competes with the likes of CoinMarketCap, which Binance acquired in 2020 for around $400 million.