First investor in a crypto startup: 3 steps, 27 named backers

To find the first investor in a crypto startup, open its NAUT project page, sort its funding rows oldest first, and read the backer list on that earliest row instead of the company's lifetime total. Worked on Bitlayer, a Bitcoin Layer 2: NAUT's data shows 4 dated rounds between 27 March 2024 and 31 July 2025, and the earliest of them, a $5M seed dated 27 March 2024, carries 27 named backers, 23 of which are firms.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 10 November 2026, read-only, and covers 1 company: Bitlayer's 4 dated funding rows and the 40 backer rows attached to them. 3 of those 4 rounds were checked against a source outside NAUT, the 27 March 2024 seed, the 23 July 2024 Series A and the 8 October 2024 Series A Extension; the 31 July 2025 ICO row was not put through that check, so it rests on NAUT's record alone. Of the 5 checks run, 2 had their quoted line found on the page and the other 3 were confirmed against a second page on Bitlayer's own domain. None of the 40 backer rows carries a lead flag, which is why the lead below comes from the round's own announcement and never from NAUT's record. Both numbers that describe the wider database count NAUT project companies with 2 or more dated rounds. NAUT Research wrote it, and the places where NAUT's record is thinner than the announcement are left in.

How to find the first investor in a crypto startup, in 3 steps

The whole job is 1 sort and 2 filters. It takes about 4 minutes per company once you know which row to trust.

1. Sort the funding rows by date, oldest first. A company page leads with the newest round and a lifetime total, and neither answers the question. Bitlayer's 4 dated rows run from a $5M seed on 27 March 2024 to a $4M ICO on 31 July 2025, so the row you want is at the bottom.
2. Read the backers on that earliest row only. 40 backer rows sit across the 4 rounds, and 27 of them sit on the seed. A fund on the $11M Series A of 23 July 2024 backed the company 4 months after the seed closed, so it is a later backer with the same logo on the same page.
3. Filter that earliest list to institutions, then get the lead from the round's own post. 23 of the 27 seed rows are firms, 3 are named individuals and 1 is a project rather than a fund. NAUT's record flags no lead on any of the 40 rows, so the lead has to come from the announcement: Bitlayer's own post of 27 March 2024 names Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital as the 2 that led the seed.

Which round came first, and who backed it?

The seed of 27 March 2024. It is the oldest of the 4 dated rows NAUT holds for Bitlayer, and it is also the one with the most backers named on it.

Not 1 of the 4 rows carries a lead flag on NAUT. The 4 rows add to $29M, of which the 3 priced rounds before the token sale account for $25M. The ICO row carries no backer on NAUT's record, which is a statement about the record and not about who bought the sale.

Here are the crypto seed round backers on that earliest row, all 27, alphabetically: ABCDE Capital, Alliance DAO, Asymmetric, Avstar Capital, CSP DAO, Cogitent Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Dan Held, DuckDAO, Dutch Crypto Investors, Faculty Capital, Faculty Group, Framework Ventures, Gate Labs, Gate.io Labs, Global Coin Research, Kenetic Capital, Kronos, Loi Luu, NxGen, OKX Ventures, PAKA, Pivot, Ryan Selkis, Starknet / Starkware, UTXO Management and Web3Port. Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

4 of those 27 are the ones step 3 sets aside: Dan Held, Loi Luu and Ryan Selkis are individuals, and Starknet / Starkware is held as a project page rather than a fund. The 10 that joined at the Series A are ABCDE Capital, Caladan, FalconX, Flow Traders, GSR, Jets Capital, Metalpha, Presto Labs, Skyland Ventures and WAGMI Ventures, and the extension of 8 October 2024 adds G-20 Group, Polychain Capital and Selini Capital.

Across all 40 rows, 39 names are distinct and ABCDE Capital is the only name on 2 rounds, the $5M seed and the $11M Series A. For a BD team that is the useful read: a repeat backer has already paid twice for the same thesis.

How much did each round raise?

The biggest round is not the first one, and that is the usual shape: the $5M seed that names 27 backers is less than half the $11M Series A that names 10.

Does the lead investor show up in NAUT's record?

No, on any of these 4 rounds. The lead flag is empty on all 40 backer rows, so the 3 announcements checked are the only place the lead is named, and 2 of them name a firm NAUT's rows for that round do not carry at all.

The 3 rounds below are the seed of 27 March 2024, the Series A of 23 July 2024 and the Series A Extension of 8 October 2024.

Round	Lead in source	NAUT rows	Source
Seed	Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital	Both, with no lead flag	Bitlayer's own post, plus a news page
Series A	Franklin Templeton and ABCDE	ABCDE Capital only	Bitlayer's own post
Extension	Polychain Capital, co-led by Franklin Templeton	Polychain Capital only	A news report, plus Bitlayer's own blog

The news page for the seed states it was "led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, with participation by OKX Ventures and Comma3 Capital", where NAUT holds that third name as Comma3 Ventures. The report on the extension also names SCB Limited as a backer of that round, and NAUT's 3 rows for it hold G-20 Group, Polychain Capital and Selini Capital. So the answer to who led stays 1 click outside the database, every time.

Why is the first investor in a crypto startup hard to name?

Because most earliest rounds carry no backer at all. Of the 1,337 NAUT project companies with 2 or more dated funding rounds, 755 have at least 1 backer named on their earliest-dated round and 582 have none. Bitlayer sits in the 755, and it was picked for that reason: on the other 582 the 3 steps above stop at step 2 and the search has to move to the round's own announcement.

2 more things can bend the count on a row that does look full.

• Near-identical names are separate rows. The seed row holds Gate Labs and Gate.io Labs, and Faculty Capital and Faculty Group. They are 4 of the 27, counted as 4 rows here, and each pair is worth a look before a BD team writes to both halves of what may be 1 firm.
• A backer row is not always a fund. 1 of the 27 is a project page, Starknet / Starkware, and 3 are people. A count of institutions on this round is 23, which is 4 fewer than the headline count of backers.

Of the 27 seed rows, 26 came in through NAUT's 2 import feeds and 1, Comma3 Ventures, was added by NAUT's own research check. Round amounts and dates carry a source link per row, which is what makes a crypto startup funding history checkable instead of just readable.

What this tells a BD team

A first-backer read is a warm-intro map, and the earliest round is where the shortest paths are. 27 firms and people put money into Bitlayer before it had a Series A, and a seed backer answers a note about a seed-stage portfolio company faster than a crossover fund does.

• Work the earliest row for intros and the newest row for budget. The 3 names on the 8 October 2024 extension are the ones closest to the company's current cap table.
• Treat a repeat name as a priority. ABCDE Capital is on 2 of the 4 rounds, so it has seen 2 sets of diligence on the same team.
• Expect to leave the database for the lead. 0 of the 40 rows carry a lead flag.

What this tells a founder raising

The same read is what a prospective backer runs on you, so it pays to know what your own earliest row says. If it is empty, the fund looking at you sees a company with no visible history before its current round.

• Check your earliest row before a data room goes out. 582 of the 1,337 NAUT companies with 2 or more dated rounds have no backer named on theirs.
• Name your own first round in the raise deck, with the date. Bitlayer's seed row carries 27 backers where its ICO row carries 0.
• Go back to the names that already said yes twice. ABCDE Capital is the only backer on 2 of the 4 rounds.

How to reach the first investor in a crypto startup

Every one of the 39 distinct names above has its own NAUT page, and a fund page lists the people at that fund with the channels NAUT holds for each. So the route is: the company page for the earliest round, the fund page for the firm that backed it, then the person at that firm who covers the stage you are at. For this round that starts at Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, the 2 firms the earliest investor question resolves to here.

Related reading on NAUT: Crypto cap table: 4 steps that found 36 backers, 6 rounds and Crypto co-investors: 3 steps, 168 on 66 rounds for 1 fund.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes, from either side of the round. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/bitlayer returns the company record and its team, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/framework-ventures returns that fund's portfolio with the company, round type, amount, announce date and lead flag on every row, which is the round-level data the 3 steps above read. Each data call costs 5 credits with Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY, so the Essential plan's 3,000 credits a month covers 600 of them; the calls are documented at https://naut.so/docs/api and the plans at https://naut.so/pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people at those funds unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so you can start a 7-day trial at https://naut.so and reveal them on the same key.

First investor in a crypto startup FAQ

Who was the first investor in a crypto startup like Bitlayer?

For Bitlayer, the earliest round NAUT holds is a $5M seed dated 27 March 2024 with 27 backers named on it, and the company's own announcement of that date names Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital as the 2 that led it. NAUT's record carries both firms on that round and flags no lead on it, or on any of the company's 4 dated rounds.

How do I tell a first backer from a later one?

Sort the company's funding rows by date and read only the oldest. Bitlayer has 4 dated rounds between 27 March 2024 and 31 July 2025 with 40 backer rows across them, and 27 of those 40 sit on the earliest round, so 13 of the names on the page joined after the seed closed.

Does NAUT name the lead investor on a round?

It has a lead flag per backer row, and on these 4 rounds it is empty on all 40. The 3 announcements checked on 10 November 2026 name Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital on the seed, Franklin Templeton and ABCDE on the $11M Series A, and Polychain Capital on the $9M extension, so a lead claim should cite the post rather than the database row.

How many crypto startups name any backer on their first round?

755 of the 1,337 NAUT project companies with 2 or more dated funding rounds have at least 1 backer named on their earliest-dated round, read on 10 November 2026, and 582 have none. On those 582 the earliest investor has to come from the round's own announcement.

Where can I find these 39 backers and their contact channels?

Each of the 39 distinct firms and people on Bitlayer's 4 rounds has its own NAUT page, reachable from the company page or through GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/<slug>, which also returns each fund's portfolio rows. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people at those funds unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so you can start a 7-day trial at https://naut.so.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 10 November 2026, read-only: Bitlayer's 4 dated funding rows with their amounts, dates and source links, the 40 backer rows attached to them with their lead flags, and the count of earliest-dated rounds carrying a backer across the 1,337 project companies with 2 or more dated rounds.
• Bitlayer's own post of 27 March 2024 announcing the $5M seed round, and a news page covering the same round, both checked for this article. The news page is the one that states the seed was "led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital, with participation by OKX Ventures and Comma3 Capital".
• Bitlayer's own post of 23 July 2024 announcing the $11M Series A, confirmed against a post on the company's blog at blog.bitlayer.org.
• A news report of 8 October 2024 on the $9M Series A Extension led by Polychain Capital, confirmed against Bitlayer's own blog post on the same round.
• Bitlayer's own whitepaper at docs.bitlayer.org, which describes the network as a Layer 2 built on a rollup architecture and the BitVM verification scheme.