Chicago-based BloXroute, which develops blockchain agnostic tools for DeFi trading, raises a $70M Series B led by Vision Fund 2
Yogita Khatri / The Block :
Context & Ripple Effects
BloXroute's $70M Series B is the latest data point in a Chicago crypto-infrastructure cluster that has been building since mid-2021: Blockdaemon's enterprise infrastructure round with Goldman Sachs among backers, Lukka's $110M Series E at a $1.3B valuation, and BlockFills' $37M Series A for institutional digital asset trading all landed within months of this deal, and PitchBook counts 26 unicorns in the city.
The lead investor is the sharper signal: Vision Fund 2 was still writing large checks into crypto trading tooling in April 2022, near the cycle peak — before the quarter where it posted a $2.1B loss and sources reported the fund worth 19% less than the $49B invested.
First-order effects
- BloXroute gains the balance sheet to scale its blockchain-agnostic DeFi trading tools against rivals like Solidus Labs, which raised its own $45M Series B for DeFi risk monitoring a month later.
- Vision Fund 2 adds another late-cycle crypto-infrastructure position to a portfolio that would soon be marked down sharply.
Second-order effects
- Competing DeFi tooling and risk-monitoring startups are forced to match the funding pace — Solidus Labs' Series B one month after this deal shows the category repricing quickly.
- Chicago's crypto talent and vendor market tightens as BlockFills, Blockdaemon, Lukka, and now BloXroute all hire against each other on freshly raised capital.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — mega-funds deploying into crypto infrastructure at cycle tops, then absorbing double-digit writedowns — crypto infrastructure financing becomes hostage to crossover fund cycles rather than usage-based revenue, raising the bar for the next generation of raises like SynFutures' smaller 2023 Series B.
- A city that missed the earlier digital boom builds a durable second act around financial-market plumbing, with PitchBook's 26 local unicorns giving Chicago a self-reinforcing founder-investor base.
The trend: Institutional-scale capital is pouring into crypto trading infrastructure at the top of the 2021-22 cycle, with fund-level losses set to discipline how the next wave of DeFi tooling gets financed.