2022年8月25日

Web3開發基礎設施初創公司Alchemy在去年2月籌集了2億美元的C1輪融資，該公司剛剛完成了有史以來的第一次收購——收購對象是教育領域。Alchemy聯合創始人兼首席執行官Nikil Viswanathan獨家告訴TechCrunch，該公司收購了教育初創公司ChainShot，該公司為有抱負的web3開發人員提供編程訓練營。Alchemy沒有透露交易條款。對於Alchemy來說，考慮到該公司的目標是成為希望在區塊鏈上開發應用程序的開發者的起點，此次收購似乎是一個合適的選擇。它通常被稱為web3的亞馬遜網絡服務(AWS)，並表示在過去12個月裏，在其平台上構建的團隊數量增加了10倍。它的估值也以驚人的速度增長，即使是對一家加密創業公司來說——它在成立僅16個月後就獲得了102億美元的估值。它的快速增長無疑吸引了投資者的關注，其中包括Lightspeed、銀湖(Silver Lake)、a16z、Coatue和Pantera等知名品牌。該公司表示，它每年為NFT平台OpenSea和DeFi應用程序Quantstamp等客戶提供超過1500億美元的交易。ChainShot聯合創始人科迪·麥凱布在接受TechCrunch采訪時表示，該公司的目標ChainShot最初是2018年ETHDenver會議上的一個黑客馬拉鬆項目。麥凱布在參加了一個編程訓練營後受到啟發，創辦了ChainShot。他說，該公司在Alchemy收購之前就已經是白手起家了。 In addition to the founders’ personal capital (which McCabe said included funds formerly in his 401k), ChainShot covered its costs largely through grants available through its connection to the Ethereum ecosystem as well as through web3 crowdfunding platform Gitcoin, he added. While ChainShot declined to share the actual number of students it works with, the company touted its 180% growth in student enrollment since January 2022. Over half of the students that have gone through its program have landed jobs within six months after graduating, McCabe said. That certainly seems high compared to other coding bootcamps like Lambda School, which reportedly has around a ~30% placement rate — and it’s worth noting that many of the best-known coding bootcamps are believed to have exaggerated their placement numbers. ChainShot founders Dan Nolan and Cody McCabe Image Credits: ChainShot Another web3 focused coding bootcamp, Encode Club, told TechCrunch in May that it had a 50%+ placement rate, similar to ChainShot, but it primarily accepted experienced coders into its program. ChainShot, in contrast, no longer has a vetting process for its students, and when it did in the past, it looked for “people that were trying to actively change and get into the ecosystem” rather than seasoned software engineers, McCabe said. “We looked at all the education platforms in the space, and the results spoke for themselves in terms of ChainShot being the best,” Viswanathan said. ChainShot’s program is currently built around its 10-week holistic bootcamp tailored toward developers looking to build on Ethereum, McCabe explained. The company plans to add more asynchronous content, such as videos, as it integrates with Alchemy and it also hopes to expand its offerings to other blockchains over time, he added, noting that ChainShot had just four employees this past year. Once rolled up into Alchemy, ChainShot will join the crypto infrastructure company’s two other education-related properties, self-paced coding programs Web3 U and Road to Web3 . It will also drop the fees it previously charged students and offer its product at no cost instead, a longstanding goal of ChainShot’s that is now possible under the Alchemy umbrella, McCabe said. As for Alchemy, Viswanathan hinted that it would continue to keep an eye out for potential acquisition targets, particularly in the developer tooling space, as it looks to significantly expand its offerings with a team of 90 employees. “We’re a small team … if we had 500 people, everyone would be working 24/7 and we’d pump out a bunch more products, but we have a lot of things that we just can’t build because of our bandwidth constraints in terms of engineering capacity. So we will always look to augment our services,” Viswanathan said. “At the end of the day, it’s all about how to provide a great experience to people building in web3, and if we see a team that has a product that enables a better experience for our customers, we’ll definitely be excited about working with them,” he added.