Crypto lead scoring: 5 points, 39 of 51 teams score 4 or more

Crypto lead scoring gives each funded team 1 point for each of 5 facts you can check before you write a word: the round was $5M or more, it was announced within 90 days, the sector matches what you sell, a decision maker is named, and a channel to reach that person exists. NAUT tracks 289 rounds announced in the 180 days to 2 November 2026, and of the 51 companies in that window tagged Infrastructure or DeFi, 10 score a 5, 29 score a 4, 11 score a 3 and 1 scores a 2.

Data note. Every number here was read from NAUT's own database on 2 November 2026, read-only. Scope: companies with at least 1 round whose announcement date falls in the 180 days to that date, tagged Infrastructure or DeFi, not archived and not merged into another row, which is 51 companies. Each company carries 1 row, its most recent qualifying round in the window. A decision maker counts when NAUT holds a current person at the company whose job title contains a seniority or function word (chief, founder, head, director, partner, lead, VP, general manager, managing), which is 146 people across the 51. A channel counts when NAUT holds a domain or an X handle for the company. The 10 round-by-round rows below were each checked against 2 outside sources, listed at the end. 1 of the 10 companies that score a 5 sits on a NAUT row where 2 different companies have been merged under 1 name, so it is left out of the worked table and the chart, which carry the other 9 plus the highest-scoring 4. Anyone named on a NAUT page can ask for it to be removed at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion. NAUT Research wrote it.

What is crypto lead scoring, and what are the 5 points?

Crypto lead scoring is a way to put a funded team in an order before you spend time on it. The 5 points below are picked because each one is a field you can read off a NAUT company page in a few seconds, so a list of 51 becomes a queue in an afternoon rather than a week.

Read that table as the shape of the cohort rather than as a ranking. Sector fit scores 51 of 51 because the 51 were selected on that tag, so inside this list the point is free; it does its work when you run the same score across all 289 rounds in the window, where most companies carry some other tag. The channel point also scores 51 of 51: NAUT holds an X handle for every one of the 51 and a domain for 47.

The point that actually separates teams is round size. 18 of the 51 rounds carry no amount at all on NAUT's record, which is a gap in the record rather than a small round, and 13 more sit under $5M. That leaves 20 at or above the threshold. Recency is the second filter: 31 of the 51 were announced within 90 days of 2 November 2026, and 20 were older.

Which funded crypto startups score 5 of 5?

Ranked by the amount NAUT holds against each round, largest first. Every date below falls in 2026. The top 9 score a 5 of 5; the tenth row, Alpaca, is the highest-scoring 4 and misses only on recency.

Date	Company	Round	Amount	Score
31 Aug	Polymarket	Undisclosed	$1,000M	5
27 Oct	HIVE Digital Technologies	Post-IPO debt	$129M	5
7 Oct	Nous Research	Series B	$90M	5
27 Oct	Hyperbolic Labs	Extended Series A	$30M	5
7 Oct	Vest Exchange	Seed	$13M	5
11 Aug	River Markets	Seed	$8.5M	5
27 Oct	0xPredicate	Series A	$8M	5
20 Aug	Beldex	Undisclosed	$8M	5
6 Oct	Anvil	OTC purchase	$5M	5
16 Jul	Alpaca	Debt financing	$300M	4

A 5 of 5 says the team is funded, on sector, named and reachable. It says nothing about whether they want what you sell, and the table shows why a score is a queue rather than a verdict: HIVE Digital Technologies and Alpaca both raised debt, which buys hardware and inventory, while Vest Exchange raised $13M of seed equity, which buys people and tools. Same score, 2 different buying committees.

Depth of names varies as much as the amounts. Polymarket carries 12 qualifying people on NAUT, including a Head of, a Co-Founder and a Director of Strategy, so you can pick a title. HIVE Digital Technologies and Alpaca each carry 1, a founder, so the first note goes to the top of the company whether you wanted that or not.

How much did each team raise?

Polymarket's $1,000M is almost 45 percent of the $2,232.0M that the 33 rounds with an amount add up to across all 51 companies, so a list sorted by size alone is 1 name long. That is the argument for a score with 5 equal points: Anvil at $5M clears the same bar as Polymarket, and both of them are reachable this week.

Where crypto lead scoring drops teams, and on which point

The 29 teams on 4 points are the useful part of this list, because each of them fails on exactly 1 thing and you can see which.

• 20 of the 29 have everything except size: a named decision maker, a channel, a round inside 90 days, and either no amount on NAUT's record or an amount under $5M.
• The other 9 have size and names but a round older than 90 days, which is the group Alpaca sits in at 110 days.
• The 11 teams on 3 points drop 2 each: 10 miss recency, 10 miss size and 2 have no qualifying person on NAUT's record.
• 3 of the 51 carry no qualifying person at all, which is where a score stops being useful and the work turns into finding a name.
• 1 team scores a 2, the lowest in the 51: no amount on its round, announced more than 90 days ago and nobody on file.

A missing amount is worth treating as its own category rather than a 0. 18 of these 51 rounds have no figure on NAUT's record, which includes rounds the company itself never disclosed. Polymarket and Beldex both carry a round type of Undisclosed with a confirmed amount beside it, so the type and the figure are separate fields and a missing figure is a prompt to read the round's source.

What crypto lead scoring tells a BD team

• Score the whole window, then cut. Scoring 289 rounds costs the same effort as scoring 51 and tells you which sectors are funded this quarter.
• Work the 39 teams on 4 or 5 points first and leave the 12 on 3 or less for a monthly sweep.
• Sort the 4s by the point they missed. A team missing only size is a real lead with a thin record; a team missing only recency is a real lead you are late to.
• Pick the channel before the person. NAUT holds an X handle for all 51 of these companies and a domain for 47.
• Count the names before you plan a sequence. 146 qualifying people across 51 companies averages under 3 each, and 3 companies have none.

What it tells a founder raising a round

The same 5 points run backwards tell you how a BD team sees your company, and 3 of the 5 are fields you control. A round with no amount on the record scores 0 on size whatever you actually raised, and 18 of these 51 companies sit in that state. A company with no current senior person on file scores 0 on names, and 3 of the 51 do.

So the fix is clerical. Check that your latest round carries an amount and a date on the pages people search, check that a current person with a functional title is on your company's own page, and check the X handle and domain against the row a directory holds for you. That turns a 3 into a 5 without a single change to the business.

How to reach the decision makers

Every company in the table above has a NAUT page that lists the people NAUT holds for it, with the channels on file against each name. The 146 qualifying people behind these 51 companies carry titles such as Co-Founder and CEO, CTO, Head of Marketing, Head of BD and Director of Strategy, and the title is what should pick the person rather than the seniority.

Start from the company page, read the titles against the decision you need made, then open the 1 person whose title names that function. On the 9 teams scoring a 5, the shallowest row carries 1 name and the deepest carries 12, so on most of them the choice is between 2 and 4 people.

Related reading on NAUT: How to qualify a sales lead: 5 checks, 46 of 167 teams pass and Crypto lead generation: 21 funded teams, 15 CEOs to pitch.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes. The cohort behind this article comes back from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects?sector=Infrastructure&sector=DeFi&sort=recent&limit=100, and 1 company's team and round history from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/polymarket, both with Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY. Each data call costs 5 credits, so scoring 51 companies at 1 call each plus the search is 260 credits, inside the 3,000 that the Essential plan carries each month; the endpoints are documented at naut.so/docs/api and the plans at naut.so/pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on those rows unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need the channels as well as the names.

Crypto lead scoring FAQ

What is crypto lead scoring?

Crypto lead scoring is a lead scoring framework that gives a funded team 1 point each for a round of $5M or more, a round announced within 90 days, a matching sector tag, a named decision maker and a channel on file. Run on the 51 Infrastructure and DeFi companies that raised in the 180 days to 2 November 2026 in NAUT's data, it returned 10 teams on 5 points, 29 on 4, 11 on 3 and 1 on 2.

How do I score crypto sales leads without a research team?

Read 5 fields off each company's page and add them up, which is what produced the table above for 51 companies. In NAUT's data the 2 fields that separate teams are the round amount, where 18 of 51 rounds carry no figure and 13 more sit under $5M, and the announcement date, where 31 of 51 fall inside 90 days of 2 November 2026.

Which funded crypto startups score highest right now?

On NAUT's record on 2 November 2026, 9 teams in the worked list score 5 of 5: Polymarket at $1,000M, HIVE Digital Technologies at $129M, Nous Research at $90M, Hyperbolic Labs at $30M, Vest Exchange at $13M, River Markets at $8.5M, 0xPredicate at $8M, Beldex at $8M and Anvil at $5M. Alpaca at $300M scores 4, missing only recency at 110 days.

Where can I find these 51 funded teams and their contact channels?

On NAUT. Each of the 51 companies has a page listing the people NAUT holds for it, which is 146 qualifying names across the cohort, and the same rows come back from the API through GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects?sector=Infrastructure&sector=DeFi&sort=recent&limit=100. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for those people unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open the channels.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 2 November 2026, read-only: the 289 rounds announced in the previous 180 days, the 51 Infrastructure and DeFi companies among them with 1 row each for their most recent qualifying round, the 146 current people with a senior or functional title at those companies, and the domain and X handle held against each company. Every count above was computed from those rows at that time.
• Polymarket, $1,000M: pymnts.com, 31 August 2026, which reports a funding round of $1,000M that doubles the firm's valuation, with Bloomberg's report of the same date as the second source.
• HIVE Digital Technologies, $129M: the company's own release of 27 October 2026, which puts the facility at approximately $129M at a 9.0% fixed rate, with TradingView's report of the same date as the second source.
• Nous Research, $90M: fourweekmba.com, 7 October 2026, which reports a closed Series B of $90M at a valuation of $1.5B, with Crypto Briefing as the second source.
• Hyperbolic Labs, $30M: finsmes.com, 27 October 2026, which reports a strategic raise of $30M, with the company's own funding post as the second source. NAUT types the round Extended Series A.
• Vest Exchange, $13M: KuCoin's news desk, 7 October 2026, which reports a closed seed round of $13M, with Benzinga as the second source.
• River Markets, $8.5M: finsmes.com and KuCoin's news desk, both read on 2 November 2026, both giving $8.5M, the figure NAUT holds. NAUT dates the round 11 August 2026 and finsmes published on 13 August 2026.
• 0xPredicate, $8M: coingape.com, 27 October 2026, reporting a Series A of $8M for Predicate, with the project's own X post as the second source.
• Beldex, $8M: finsmes.com, 20 August 2026, which reports a raise of $8M, with TradingView's calendar entry as the second source.
• Anvil, $5M: coininsider.org, 6 October 2026, reporting a $5M purchase of governance tokens led by Founders Fund, the venture firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, with parameter.io as the second source.
• Alpaca, $300M: en.coin-turk.com, 16 July 2026, reporting debt financing of up to $300M from Payward, the parent company of the exchange Kraken, and BMO, with Finance Magnates as the second source.