Elementus, a blockchain analytics firm, announced on Monday, February 6th that it had raised $10 million at a $160 million valuation. The funds raised are reportedly earmarked for hiring and new product development. The series A-2 round was led by ParaFi Capital.

Elementus Raises $10 Million for Hiring, New Product Development

According to a press release from Monday, Elementus, an analytics company, raised $10 million at a $160 million valuation in a ParaFI Capital-led series A-2 funding round. ParaFi is notable as a firm that had backed numerous other promising blockchains firms and projects—like Uniswap’s effort to provide NFT trading through multiple marketplaces last September.

Elementus is a blockchain analytics company that strives to provide intelligence, compliance strategies, and on-chain data primarily to government organizations, major financial institutions, investors, and researchers. Max Galka, the firm’s CEO, stated that the goal of the funding round is to enable Elementus to help the broader cryptocurrency industry build “trust, reliability, and security”, as it emerges from the turmoil of 2022.

Last year has thrown into the limelight the tremendous importance of comprehension, auditability, and transparency of blockchains. As the broader crypto industry seeks to emerge from a tough year, it will be critical to do so in a way that foments trust, reliability and security among both users and businesses operating in this still-nascent market. This new strategic investment from ParaFi allows us to continue building the world’s most advanced industrial-grade blockchain data solutions in the world that will help return confidence and transparency to blockchain-based businesses.

The company’s press release also highlights that it had managed to increase its valuation from $52 million to $160 million between October 2021 and February 2023—a 208% increase—despite the issues caused by the “crypto winter”. Elementus has also been selected as the “Blockchain Intelligence and Forensics Expert” by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the bankruptcies of BlockFi and Celsius.

How 2022 Shook The Confidence in Crypto

While 2022 has been a difficult year across the board with some of the highest inflation recorded in decades in the US, and the highest inflation ever recorded in the eurozone, the digital assets sector has been particularly hard hit. Last year in May, the dollar peg of UST failed kickstarting the LUNA collapse.

The event wiped an estimated $60 billion and initiated a chain reaction that saw multiple major firms like Three Arrows Capital file for bankruptcy and led to an international manhunt for Terraform Labs’ CEO Do Kwon. The already beleaguered crypto industry took another huge hit after the collapse of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX revealed a stunning amount of corporate malpractice and fraud within the company.

The two major collapses not only led to numerous other bankruptcies but also shook the confidence in digital asset firms and caused an even more heavy-handed approach by regulators—an approach likely only to become even tougher as the White House recently commended the work of watchdogs and called on Congress to step up its efforts.

On the other hand, numerous companies used 2022 to push deeper into the digital assets sector. For example,  Fidelity Investments added Bitcoin to its 401(k) offering, and the famous footwear company Nike launched its own NFT marketplace. This year is also likely to see major additions as Amazon is reportedly working on an NFT initiative, and Walmart recently filed several web3-related trademarks signaling that Elementus is likely to find multiple parties interested in its analyses.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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