INVESTORS POUR CASH INTO CRYPTO INFRASTRUCTURE START-UPS

Private equity firms Silver Lake and Lightspeed Venture Partners led a recent $200-million funding round for a company called Alchemy that makes software for crypto developers. Alchemy is now valued at $10.2 billion, the company said on 8 February.
A day earlier, the Indian company Polygon, which creates software that makes   Ethereum transactions easier, announced it had raised $450 million by selling its own crypto tokens to a group of more than 40 investors, including Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global Management, and Softbank’s second Vision Fund.
Solana Labs, which bills itself as “the world’s fastest blockchain,” took in more than $300 million last June from Andreessen Horowitz and other backers.
“There’s a lot of people working on infrastructure for Web3,” the name often given to the crypto universe, Alchemy’s co-founder Nikil Viswanathan told the Financial Times. “There’s a lot of space in the market.”
Last year, companies working in Web3 collected $31.6 billion in new investment, the FT reported.
Consumer-facing crypto apps such as gaming have drawn most of the attention given to the sector.
However, building the “back office” that makes crypto transactions quick and easy remains a work in progress.
For example, Ethereum’s delay in reconfiguring its system has driven up user fees and sent some crypto fans to other blockchains that are easier and cheaper to use.
TREND FORECAST: The money pouring into crypto’s “engine rooms” will correct key problems that have kept many casual users out of digital currencies. As the transactions become easier and faster to make, more people will be willing to “go crypto,” speeding the currencies’ widespread acceptance, especially by older adults.