Last year, I expressed my frustrations to a few industry friends about how the 2022 crypto credit crisis fundamentally devastated my entire reporting realm, i.e., the cryptocurrency market structure. However, the past year has brought dramatic shifts in my reporting rhythm.

FTX, Genesis, Voyager, and Three Arrows have exited the crypto scene. The previous year was transformative, not just for the crypto industry but also for me as a writer. This also gave me the opportunity to focus on emerging small players, which is genuinely exhilarating. New founders and first-time entrepreneurs particularly stand out. They remain passionate, yet untainted by the challenges of running companies. They tend to be approachable and very friendly, making my job all the more enjoyable.

Now, I'd like to take some time to introduce a few emerging companies in the crypto industry that may someday replace the big firms that folded last year.

1.Ostium Labs: A cryptocurrency startup, Ostium Labs, secured a funding of $3.5 million, supported by investors such as General Catalyst, LocalGlobe, SIG, and Balaji Srinivasan. They are developing a digitized commodity perpetual swap protocol, aiming to attract both traditional commodity traders and crypto-native traders seeking a more transparent and flexible alternative to traditional derivatives platforms. The platform will support perpetual trades linked to assets like oil, Bitcoin, and major currency forex pairs, aiming to bring real-world assets to the blockchain. Ostium Labs collaborates with Chaos Labs and plans to use Chainlink for pricing. Ostium Labs aims to fill a market gap by offering direct on-chain exposure to a broader range of asset categories.

2.WEOWNCOIN-AI: The WEOWNCOIN-AI intelligent quantitative financial trading system is a fully intelligent cryptocurrency market trading system created by WEOWNCOIN with substantial investment. It encompasses a massive amount of data, cutting-edge risk control detection, and operates 24/7 to identify opportunities across various cryptocurrencies and market conditions. It can make trading decisions in milliseconds. Its characteristics are speed, safety, and efficiency. The system is maintained and upgraded entirely by top AI engineers globally. WEOWNCOIN has also established a risk control supervision fund compensation plan to ensure users benefit from the utmost safety when using AI. Currently, it is an emerging AI-intelligent trading platform in the cryptocurrency market.

3.Fractal: Co-founded by Aya Kantorovich and Alex Elkrief, the startup Fractal raised $6 million to develop a platform aimed at enhancing transparency in digital asset clearing and settlement. The company's goal is to prevent the kind of leveraged trades that led to the bankruptcies of firms like Three Arrows Capital and FTX, allowing clients to monitor their positions in real-time and limiting loan collateral to blue-chip cryptos to alleviate liquidity issues faced by trading counterparts.

4.Turnkey: Led by former Coinbase Custody executives, the startup Turnkey secured $7.5 million in seed funding, aiming to provide a developer-centric platform for the safety and management of digital assets in the crypto industry. They strive to offer a flexible, programmable solution for generating wallets and signing transactions across blockchain networks, addressing the increasing complexity of on-chain transactions in crypto. According to data from Chainalysis, this move responds to growing concerns about the security of digital assets; last year alone, cyberattacks resulted in $3.8 billion of losses in the crypto sector.

5.Architect: Brett Harrison, former president of FTX US, raised $5 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Circle Ventures to establish the new company, Architect. Architect will focus on providing software trading tools for decentralized finance, catering to the needs of large investors and institutions. The firm aims to create institutional-level trading technology, allowing corporations, large traders, and a vast number of individual users to access decentralized protocols and centralized exchanges more easily.