A crypto fund sector focus check takes 4 steps on the fund's own round rows: count the rounds and the companies yourself, count the rounds by sector tag, split the rounds that carry a date from the bulk program rows, then read each company's own description against the tag. Worked on Alliance DAO, NAUT tracks 201 backed rounds across 192 published companies, 57 of them tagged DeFi and 29 tagged Infrastructure, with 46 rounds carrying an announce date between 5 February 2021 and 4 October 2026, all read on 7 November 2026.
Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 7 November 2026, read-only, from the backer rows that tie this fund to a funding round. A round is counted when its company row is live and published, which gives 202 rows. 1 of those 202 is left out of every count in this article for a reason of its own: its stored company name, its slug and its stored summary describe 2 different companies, so NAUT cannot say which company the round belongs to, and that leaves the 201 rounds used throughout. 8 claims drawn from this fund's record were put to public sources on 7 November 2026: 6 came back confirmed, 1 contradicted and 1 not found. This article uses the 4 confirmed claims that carry a second public page as well as the first, and leaves the other 4 out, including the contradicted one. NAUT Research wrote it, and the places where NAUT's own record is thin are named rather than tidied away.
Crypto fund sector focus in 4 steps
The question a founder actually asks is whether this fund has written checks into the thing they are building. A crypto VC thesis stated on a fund's homepage answers that with adjectives. Counting fund portfolio sectors off the round rows answers it with numbers, and the numbers only hold if you know which rows carry a date and which do not.
- Count the rounds and companiesNAUT holds 201 backed rounds for Alliance DAO across 192 published companies, so rounds and companies are 2 different counts.
- Count rounds by sector tag57 of the 201 rounds carry DeFi, 29 carry Infrastructure, 17 carry Payment, and 53 carry no sector tag at all.
- Split out the rounds with a date46 of the 201 carry an announce date, from 5 February 2021 to 4 October 2026, and 138 arrived as undated accelerator rows.
- Read the company's own wordsSuilend and Bitlayer describe their own products in terms that match their DeFi and Infrastructure tags.
Step 1: count the rounds and the companies, not the logo wall
A portfolio page is a logo wall, and a logo wall has no arithmetic in it. Start from the round rows. Alliance DAO has 201 of them on NAUT once the 1 unreadable row is set aside, and they resolve to 192 distinct published companies, because 9 companies hold 2 backed rounds each. A round count and a company count answer 2 different questions, and a pitch built on the wrong one overstates how many teams the fund has actually funded.
Step 2: count rounds by sector tag, and count the rows with no tag
Sector tags sit on the company row, so a round inherits every tag its company carries. Across the 201 rounds NAUT holds 232 sector tags spread over 148 rounds, drawn from 25 distinct sectors, and the other 53 rounds carry no tag. That is why the table below does not add up to 201 and is not meant to: a round tagged DeFi and RWA is counted in both lines. The useful reading is the gap between the top line and the rest, which here is wide.
Step 3: separate the dated rounds from the bulk program rows
This is the step that changes the answer. Of the 201 rounds, 155 carry no announce date, and 138 of those came from a single bulk import of the fund's accelerator cohorts: every 1 of the 138 carries the round type Accelerator, carries no date, and carries the same stored amount of $350,000. A check of the fund's own site on 7 November 2026 did not confirm $350,000 as the program's current figure, so treat it as a constant written onto the rows rather than a per-round number. Ripe and Superbank, both tagged Payment and RWA, are 2 of those 138, which is why the Payment line in the table reads 17 rounds and only 1 of them carries a date.
The lead flags carry the same warning. All 138 lead flags on this fund sit on those bulk accelerator rows, and none of the 46 dated rounds is flagged as led by this fund, so a lead count read off this record describes the import and not the deals.
Step 4: read each company's own description against its tag
A tag is a lead, and the company's own words are the proof. 3 of the companies in the worked set were checked against their own sites and a second public page on 7 November 2026, and all 3 held up: Suilend is a lending and borrowing protocol on Sui, which its own site calls the largest lending protocol on that chain, matching its DeFi and DEX tags. Bitlayer is a Bitcoin layer 2 built on BitVM, matching its Infrastructure tag. Solv Protocol runs Bitcoin yield and tokenization products with real-world-asset backing, matching its DeFi and RWA pair. The fund's own X account was confirmed on the same date as the handle NAUT stores, and its profile links the fund's site.
Which sectors does Alliance DAO back, and how many rounds each?
Ranked by the number of backed rounds carrying each tag, from the 201 rounds NAUT holds for the fund as of 7 November 2026. The Rounds column counts tags, so it sums past 201: the 201 rounds carry 232 tags across 148 rounds, and 53 rounds carry none. Share is each tag's rounds as a share of the 201, and Dated counts how many of those rounds carry an announce date.
NAUT stores 2 of these tags with their long names, "DEX (Decentralized Exchange)" and "CEX (Centralized Exchange)", shortened to DEX and CEX below.
| Sector | Rounds | Share | Dated |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeFi | 57 | 28.4% | 24 |
| Infrastructure | 29 | 14.4% | 13 |
| Payment | 17 | 8.5% | 1 |
| DEX | 15 | 7.5% | 5 |
| RWA | 15 | 7.5% | 2 |
| Tools | 13 | 6.5% | 3 |
| L1/2/3 | 12 | 6.0% | 6 |
| CEX | 8 | 4.0% | 4 |
| DePIN | 8 | 4.0% | 1 |
| Stablecoins | 8 | 4.0% | 2 |
DeFi leads on both measures, 57 rounds of 201 and 24 of the 46 dated rounds, so it is the only sector where the pattern survives step 3. Payment and DePIN look busy in the first column and nearly vanish in the last.
Which dated rounds show the focus, and what did each raise?
7 of the 46 dated rounds are worked through here, picked because each one carries a disclosed amount, a stored source and a sector tag that step 4 could test. NAUT stores 2 of the 7 as Series A (Avail and Solv Protocol), 3 as Seed Round (Goldfinch, Bitlayer and Endaoment) and 2 as Funding Round (Suilend and inkfinance). The 46 dated rounds hold $437,200,000 in disclosed amounts between them, and 8 of the 46 are dated 2024 or later.
| Company | Raised | Announced |
|---|---|---|
 Avail |
$43M | 4 June 2024 |
 Goldfinch |
$11M | 16 June 2021 |
 Suilend |
$6M | 5 December 2024 |
 Bitlayer |
$5M | 27 March 2024 |
 Solv Protocol |
$4M | 1 December 2021 |
 inkfinance |
$3.5M | 7 June 2024 |
 Endaoment |
$2.5M | 2 June 2021 |
NAUT's sector tags on those 7 rounds: Avail Infrastructure and DeFi, Goldfinch DeFi, Money Market and RWA, Suilend DeFi and DEX, Bitlayer Infrastructure, AI and DeFi, Solv Protocol DeFi and RWA, inkfinance DeFi, Endaoment Payment.
Those 7 rounds total $75,000,000 of the $437,200,000 NAUT holds across all 46 dated rounds, and 1 round, the $43,000,000 Series A at Avail, is 57.3% of the 7.
What a crypto fund sector focus check tells a founder raising
- Lead with the sector the dated rounds support. DeFi holds 24 of the 46 dated rounds for this fund, so a DeFi team is pitching into a pattern the record can show, and a DePIN team is pitching into 1 dated round.
- Size your ask against the dated rounds, not the program rows. The disclosed amounts on this fund's dated rounds run from $2,500,000 at Endaoment to $43,000,000 at Avail.
- Check how recent the pattern is. 8 of the 46 dated rounds are 2024 or later, so the shape of the record is mostly 2021 and 2022, and a sector claim about this year needs a 2024 round or newer behind it.
- A BD lead gets the same use out of step 2 in reverse: the 53 untagged rounds are companies nobody has classified yet, which is 53 records where your own read of the company is the only read there is.
- 61 of the 201 rounds have at least 1 other backer on NAUT's record, so most of this fund's rows name no co-backer at all, and a co-investor map built off it covers those 61 rounds only.
- Match your sector to the dated rounds24 of the 46 dated rounds carry DeFi, 13 Infrastructure and 6 L1/2/3.
- Pick 2 named rounds as proofSuilend at $6,000,000 in December 2024 and Avail at $43,000,000 in June 2024 are the recent dated pair.
- Size the askDisclosed amounts on the dated rounds run $2,500,000 to $43,000,000.
- Open the fund's page for the peopleAlliance DAO carries the fund's team and its confirmed X account on NAUT.
Related reading on NAUT: How to research a VC fund: 6 checks, 23 rounds, 27 partners and How to find crypto investors by round size: 28 funds, 4 steps.
Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?
Yes, in 1 call for the fund and 1 per company. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/alliance-dao with the header Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY returns the fund with its team and its portfolio, where each row carries the company, roundType, amountUsd, announceDate and isLead, which are the 4 fields all 4 steps above are read from, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/suilend returns 1 of the worked companies with its team. Each data call costs 5 credits, so the fund plus the 7 worked companies is 8 calls and 40 credits of the 3,000 on the Essential plan at $49 a month (API docs, plans and quotas). Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on these records unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial when you need the channel as well as the company.
Crypto fund sector focus FAQ
How do I know what a crypto fund invests in?
What does a VC fund invest in is answerable from its round rows: count the backed rounds by sector tag, then recount using only the rounds that carry an announce date. For Alliance DAO on 7 November 2026 that gives 57 DeFi rounds of 201, and 24 DeFi rounds of the 46 that carry a date between 5 February 2021 and 4 October 2026.
What is Alliance DAO's sector focus on NAUT?
DeFi, on both counts. 57 of the 201 backed rounds NAUT holds for the fund carry the DeFi tag, ahead of Infrastructure at 29 and Payment at 17, and DeFi also holds 24 of the 46 rounds that carry an announce date, read on 7 November 2026.
Why do 53 of the 201 rounds carry no sector tag?
Sector tags sit on the company record, and 53 of the 201 companies behind this fund's rounds carry none as of 7 November 2026, so those rounds inherit nothing. 47 of the 53 are rows from the fund's bulk accelerator import, and the other 6 sit on companies that were added with a round and no tags.
Can I tell who led a round from this fund's record?
Not from this one. All 138 lead flags on Alliance DAO sit on the undated accelerator rows, and none of the 46 dated rounds is flagged as led by the fund, so the lead question needs the round's own announcement.
Where can I find the companies a crypto fund backed and their contact channels?
On NAUT's investor and company pages, and through the NAUT API: the 192 companies behind this fund's 201 rounds each have a page with their team, sector tags and funding history, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/alliance-dao returns the same portfolio rows for 5 credits a call. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for those people unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open them.
Sources
- NAUT's own database, read on 7 November 2026: the backer rows tying Alliance DAO to 202 published rounds, 1 of which is excluded above, the 232 sector tags on the remaining 201, the 46 announce dates, the 201 stored amounts and the 138 lead flags.
- Suilend, the company's own site at https://www.suilend.fi with https://cryptobriefing.com/solend-taps-sui-new-defi-lending-protocol-suilend/ as a second page.
- Bitlayer, the company's own site at https://www.bitlayer.org with https://www.xverse.app/blog/what-is-bitlayer as a second page.
- Solv Protocol, the company's own site at https://solv.finance with https://crypto.news/solv-launches-rwa-backed-bitcoin-yield-product/ as a second page.
- The fund's X account, checked on 7 November 2026 against the handle NAUT stores, with its profile linking https://alliance.xyz.
- NAUT API docs and pricing: https://naut.so/docs/api and https://naut.so/pricing