The VC Landscape in 2025: Perspectives From Emerging Managers

EtherKnight Stage

Infrastructure & Scalability

Spork Castle 2nd Floor

Feb 27, 2025

12:30 PM

The fundraising market for new, emerging blockchain-focused VC funds has been bleak. There have been fewer than 35 crypto venture capital funds closed this year, with less than $2B in capital raised (compared to 260 funds and $45B in 2022—a more than 88% and 95% decline, respectively). In many ways, though, new, emerging funds are a critical part of a healthy ecosystem—helping entrepreneurs take bigger risks by providing initial investments and generally making earlier, smaller pre-seed and seed-stage investments where the larger funds will not. The purpose of this panel is to highlight the trends these new, emerging VC funds—Reflexive Capital, Reforge VC, Topology, Metalayer VC, and Hash3—are most excited about. Each firm has had to build a compelling value proposition and differentiation to successfully raise capital in this market, often through unique insights within core thematic focus areas. This discussion will explore the areas these funds are actively deploying capital into and exploring in 2025.

speakers

Alexander Lin - Reforge, Shima Capital

Sunny Parikh - Investor in Elixir, Quantstamp, Sapien, etc.

Casey Caruso - Topology

Catrina Wang - Portal Ventures

Moderator

Mickey Graham - Metalayer, Chainlink, Ethena, Crossover Markets, ClearToken

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