We invest at key inflection points for blockchain technologies to create breakthrough opportunities across global markets.

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35% of US employment is spent creating trust. Auditors, notaries, attorneys, courts, custodians, compliance officers. Trust-establishing work is the single largest category in the modern economy. It is also being repriced. The repricing started in financial infrastructure. Custody costs heading to zero. Cross-border settlement collapsing from days to seconds. Aave hit $44B in custody at peak (late 2025) at zero fixed cost. It hit AI a second time. The Hong Kong CFO who got on a Zoom call with deepfakes of his CEO and the board, and wired $20M. AWS outages caused by AI agents managing production clusters without human oversight. AI is the most powerful trust-eroding technology we have built. Trust intermediaries built on human schedules cannot keep up with fraud produced on machine schedules. The cost of creating fakes goes to zero. The value of verified trust goes up exponentially. And it is opening categories that were not possible before. Permissionless conversion-based advertising. Hallucination-proof knowledge graphs. Programmable insurance. Eight years of investing. One argument. Cost of Trust 2.0, our 2026 thesis. Read it: 1kx.capital/thesis/cost-of-t… 35% stat: "The Cost of Trust: A Pilot Study," SSRN. Aave peak TVL: DefiLlama. AWS outages: The Guardian, February 2026.
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With prices up, onchain fees rose 14% in August, adding over $130M month over month. Roughly 75% of the gain came from one corner of the market: @Pumpfun and the Solana ecosystem. Pump.fun added $56M in fees as trading surged alongside its new social features, and now sits firmly on top of the leaderboard. The apps around that flow gained with it. @AxiomExchange added $16M, @gmgnai $10M, @fomo more than doubled its fees for the second month in a row, @HyperliquidX added $13M back after a soft July, and Solana's DEXs (@Raydium, @JupiterExchange, @orca_so, @MeteoraAG) added about $15M between them. Robinhood Chain had a strong second month. Protocols on it added over $20M in fees, @ponsdotfamily gained another $16M after its July top-20 debut, and more than 60% of Uniswap's fees now originate on the chain. By sector: consumer apps and wallets rose most, DeFi's gains came from DEXs (+30%), and blockchains benefited from both higher prices and more activity, with @BNBCHAIN nearly doubling transaction fees. On the decline side: Noxa went to zero after shutting down, one month after it entered the top 20. Polymarket lost $10M in fees. All of it is on the dashboard. Link below.
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On the latest Block Party, @blockchain's podcast, our founding partner @lalleclausen cites research putting roughly 35% of US employment in trust-establishing functions. Auditors, notaries, attorneys, courts. That is the trust tax on the economy, and it's the problem 1kx has organised its entire portfolio around. Lasse walks host @Nickocary through it: why the winners of the last decade all combined a trust-related zero-to-one with a tangible fee reduction, why decentralized ID failed that test while stablecoins passed it emphatically, and what it means that his last international wire "was like sending a fax." There's also candid advice for first-time founders, including the fastest way to lose an investor's trust in the first meeting: try to sell them. "We've seen it a million times. We can smell it from a million miles away." Full episode linked below.
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1kx has been named to @TIME's America's Top Venture Capital Firms 2026, compiled with @StatistaCharts. We have spent eight years underwriting blockchain technology on fundamentals: the infrastructure, the applications built on it, and onchain finance as it moves from experiment to market structure. The list measures firms on fundraising, investment activity, performance and leadership, and we are glad the work holds up on those terms. Credit belongs to the founders building at this frontier, and to the LPs who have committed across cycles with us. Full list below.
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Total crypto revenues fell 23% YoY in H1 2026, to $47B. The decline is what you'd expect in a bear market. Most crypto revenue still tracks prices and volumes: exchanges, brokerage, wallets, staking, mining. Two drivers behind most of the $14B drop: 1) Finance-related income fell below 2024 levels. CEX, derivatives and market maker income was down $5.2B, onchain DeFi down $1.8B (-32%), ETF and fund management fees down $1.1B. 2) Blockchain revenues kept grinding lower. Staking and mining rewards fell $6.2B, transaction fees and MEV halved. Blockchains are down to 25% of industry revenue, a historical low. What didn't follow the cycle: stablecoin and RWA issuance, prediction markets, DePIN. Such less cyclical segments grew 14% YoY to $12B. That's 26% of the industry now, and the number we're watching most closely. Stablecoin and RWA issuer income added $0.7B. Stablecoin cards and payments added $0.1B, in line with what @a16zcrypto shared a few days ago. Prediction markets roughly 10x'd fee income, an estimated +$0.3B. DePIN fees nearly doubled. Middleware onchain fees rose about 70%, most of that @chainlink. DeFi/Finance fell in dollars but its share of industry revenue climbed to 64%. Consumer onchain fees held up better than average, down 20%. Some perspective: the last bear bottomed at $28B in half-year revenue (H2 2022). This one is running at $47B, with about a quarter of it coming from the segments that grew through the bear. What counts as revenue here: onchain-traceable fees, other income like staking yield, and offchain fees, either publicly reported (Coinbase) or estimated (Binance). The mix of the three barely moved YoY. Full methodology is in our 2025 revenue report. The 2026 edition is in the works.
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Live onchain revenue data: 1kx.capital/onchain-revenue-… Full methodology, incl. how we estimate offchain revenue: 1kx.capital/research/2025-on…
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25+ industry leaders will take the stage at DAYS Singapore on October 6! DAYS Singapore brings together leading voices across digital assets, institutional finance, and onchain markets. Meet the speakers: › Matthew Sheffield (@sheffieldreport), Chief Investment Officer at @Sharplink › Sonya Kim (@sonyasunkim), Co-Founder at @3f_xyz › Vadim Khramov (@vadimthedream0), Founder and Chief Investment Officer at @EdgeCapitalMgmt › Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley), CEO at @Bitwise Asset Management › Elizabeth Yenko, Managing Director & Head of Digital Assets Strategy at @NYLIManagement › TN (@tn_pendle), Director at @pendle_fi › Joseph Chee (@JosephChee_), Chairman & CEO at @Solana_Company › Lingling JIANG (@Lingersj), Partner at @DWFLabs › Kefei Lin, General Manager at SBI Holdings › James Wo (@realjameswo), Founder & CEO at @DFG__Official › Yannick Socolov (@Yannimoto), Head of Special Projects, Onchain at Bitwise Asset Management › Lasse Clausen (@lalleclausen ), Founding Partner at @1kxnetwork › Pei Chen (@PeiChen01), CEO at @TheoriqAI › Marcos Viriato (@mcvviriato), Co-Founder & CEO at @parfin_io › Jasmine Jia, Head of Tokenization Ecosystem at @Fidelity Investments › Evgeny Gokhberg (@evgeny_re7), Founder at @Re7Labs › Artem Stopnevich (@stopnevich), CEO at @thevault_soft › Felix Lutsch (@FelixLts), Head of Ecosystem at @symbioticfi › Jose Martinez Sanguinetti (@MartinezSang), Founder & CEO at Sothys Capital › Anna Dinescu, Managing Partner at @HilbertCapital › Dan Kang, Chief Strategy Officer at DeFi Development Corp › Sam Gaer (@samg67), Chief Investment Officer at Monarq Asset Management › Chunda McCain (@ChundaMcCain), Co-Founder at @paxoslabs › Piotr Saczuk (@stablecoin_p), Founder at @stablewatchHQ & @OseroHQ › More to be announced Digital Asset Yield Summit brings private capital together to explore yield opportunities in digital assets. Invite-only and capped at 300, it’s a buy-side-majority room: 40% LPs/allocators, 40% GPs/asset managers. 🔗Request your Ticket → daysevent.com/singapore#pass… 🔗Apply for Complimentary Capital Allocator Pass → events.stakingrewards.com/ca… See you in Singapore!
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Congrats to @cantinasecurity on the launch and the raise. We’ve backed this team from their earliest days, and this is why: their agents take a vulnerability all the way through to a verified fix. Live at cantina.security
We spent years finding vulnerabilities before attackers did. That was the easy part. Teams already know what's broken. Nobody has the bandwidth to close it. Today we raised $16.5M to make Cantina the security workforce for your security workforce. cantina.review/next-chapter-…
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Some yield replaces a fee someone was already paying: a bank spread, a broker's cut, settlement float. Some comes from markets that legacy finance structurally can't serve. Everything else is repackaged risk. Our founding partner @lalleclausen brings that lens to @Yield_Summit Singapore, Oct 6.
We welcome Lasse Clausen (@lalleclausen), Founding Partner at @1kxnetwork, as a speaker at DAYS Singapore! With over a decade of experience in the blockchain ecosystem, Lasse has been at the forefront of the industry's evolution, successfully navigating four market cycles and establishing a reputation for disciplined, fundamentals-driven investing. @1kxnetwork is a research-driven, fundamentals-focused global investment firm with a mission to develop the domain expertise and thought leadership required to accelerate the most consequential markets emerging at the intersection of blockchain and the broader economy. Don’t miss Lasse on the stage, October 6 The Digital Asset Yield Summit brings private capital together to explore yield opportunities in digital assets. Invite-only and capped at 300, it’s a buy-side-majority room: 40% LPs/allocators, 40% GPs/asset managers.
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Onchain fees fell 33% in Q2, year over year. Value returned to token holders barely moved. That second number is the more interesting one. The decline itself is what a bear market looks like. DEX fees dropped $625M (-57%), led by @MeteoraAG, @Raydium and @PancakeSwap, three protocols that generated $1.5B in fees in H1 last year. Blockchain and MEV fees fell $362M (-40%). Launchpads fell 57%, with @Pumpfun accounting for nearly half of that. Not everything fell, though: Perps and prediction markets grew fees 22% YoY, led by @edgeX_exchange and @HyperliquidX. @Polymarket did close to $100M in Q2 alone. Lending and asset management kept compounding, with @Morpho, @USDai_Official and @maplefinance each adding $9-19M. @CantonNetwork added $179M in L1 fees, though much of that is incentive-driven, and we treat it accordingly. Two of these names, Canton and Polymarket, are new entrants to the fee top 20. And through all of it, distributions to token holders held nearly flat. @binance's burns still account for a meaningful share, but the more telling shift is protocols like Hyperliquid routing revenue into buybacks and burns as deliberate policy. Payout ratios went up in a quarter where revenue fell by a third. Whether that discipline survives a longer bear is one of the things we'll be watching closest into H2. We built a public dashboard to track all of this. Link in the first comment. Deep dive on the dashboard coming soon.
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The vintages raised when consensus is weakest are usually the ones that outperform, and that is how this moment reads to us. Talent is strong, capital is scarce, and while many crypto funds say deal flow has dried up, we’re seeing more of it than at any point since we started. 1kx Founding Partner @lalleclausen joined @bennypjacobs on Scenius Studio to walk through what that looks like on the ground: --> Why Web2 founders are finding product-market fit in crypto while crypto-native founders are stalling --> Where the line falls between what wins as a token network and what wins as a company --> How Cost of Trust 2.0 holds up in the current cycle
In episode 62 of Scenius Studio I sit down with @lalleclausen, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of @1kxnetwork. With Lasse at the helm and roots dating back to 2018, 1kx has become one of the industry’s most reputable venture firms with a deep-research, thesis driven investment approach. The team recently released the second iteration of their Cost of Trust thesis which frames where they believe the largest crypto outcomes will come from over the next few cycles. Lasse is a true professional with a firm grip on the evolving crypto venture dynamics. In this episode we discuss: ➔ Lasse’s background and the decision to launch 1kx ➔ Lessons learned in the 8 years since running the firm ➔ Evolving venture dynamics and the new founder archetype in crypto ➔ The Cost of Trust Thesis 2.0 ➔ What categories enable a 0-1 change and have rent-seeking intermediaries that are ripe for disruption and large outcomes ➔ Attributes that 1kx looks for in the founders they back ➔ Lasse’s spiciest takes 🌶 Hope you enjoy this episode of Scenius Studio. Links to listen below👇 Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3ed… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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Capital markets spend $17 to $24B a year on trade processing alone, the back-office cost of matching up separate ledgers across every party in a deal. Tokenization compresses that cost. The savings land in compliance, data, and issuance infrastructure. Those are also the three layers the incumbents end up renting from someone else, which is the strongest place to build in this market and the part @explorerdfa walks through in detail.
Everything we back at @1kxnetwork comes down to one question: what does it cost two parties who don't fully trust each other to transact, and who keeps the margin that cost creates? In capital markets that margin runs to $17 to $24 billion a year on trade processing alone, the back-office work of matching, confirming, and reconciling trades that exists because every party keeps a separate ledger that has to be checked against everyone else's. It's the most measurable piece of the cost of trust, billed back to whoever is transacting. $32B in real-world assets now sit on public blockchains, up 5x from January 2025. BlackRock's BUIDL alone holds $2.4B; Apollo, Franklin Templeton, Goldman, BNY, and JPMorgan are all running tokenized funds or payment rails, with Kinexys processing more than $5B daily; the DTCC announced a tokenization pilot for 2026 earlier this year. The shift from crypto-native experiment to incumbent infrastructure project happened largely in the last 18 months. Tokenization is doing four things to assets in this market: letting them settle around the clock, making ownership programmable, cutting issuance and servicing costs by collapsing intermediaries, and opening access to investors who couldn't reach these assets through domestic brokers. The limits matter just as much: liquidity still depends on whether anyone wants the asset, credit risk still depends on whether the borrower pays back, and most tokenized equities today are synthetic or custodial claims rather than direct shares on a company's register. I wrote a piece walking through the six layers of the RWA stack and where value concentrates by asset class. 1kx invests in the three layers an incumbent ends up renting from someone else regardless of how much it spends internally: compliance, data, and the issuance infrastructure asset managers depend on. Four 1kx portfolio companies already serving institutions at scale: @SuperstateInc, @0xPredicate, @cryptio_co, @redstone_defi. Between them, they cover issuance, compliance, accounting, and oracles for the firms running this market. The fourth layer runs the other way. Distribution isn't a neutral rail, it's the place to own the end customer, and the edge we see there is in DeFi, the channel we think gains most from tokenization. Full piece linked in the reply. Building in this space? We want to hear from you. Disclosure: 1kx is an investor in Superstate, Predicate, Cryptio, and RedStone.
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From @_weidai’s new piece: "every production system we examined makes local & per-step decisions. In contrast, the highest-risk failures are at the sequence level." Security and Trust: The Bottleneck of Deploying Agentic AI. The 3rd drop in the Cost of Trust 2.0 thesis series: 1kx.capital/thesis/agentic-s…
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1kx Research Partner @_weidai on the $2B+ that moved into AI security M&A in 2025-26, what it priced, and where the next venture-scale category gets built. Wei covers the Cost of Trust frame, applied to the agent layer - article link in the comments.
Deployment of agentic AI is no longer bottlenecked by capability, but rather on security & trust. New piece in the @1kxnetwork cost of trust series: 20+ security incidents, 50+ products, and 100+ academic papers condensed and mapped onto a four-layer architecture.
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Only 35 cents of every advertising dollar reaches a real human. @pet3rpan_ on where the cost of trust gets repriced next. From the full Cost of Trust 2.0 discussion, live today: 1kx.capital/thesis/cost-of-t…
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35 cents stat: adslot.com/wp-content/upload… (page 20)
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