ARCHITECT SUCCESSES

SEE ALL
Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack
Coinme Acquired by Polygon Labs to Build its Open Money Stack

Transaction Overview
On January 13th, 2026, Polygon Labs announced it intends to acquire Coinme, a regulated crypto-as-a-service provider. Simultaneously, Polygon also announced the acquisition of Sequence, enabling payment flows across blockchain networks. Both acquisitions help build a fully integrated, rules-compliant stablecoin payments system – Poygon’s Open Money Stack.

Target: Coinme
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Seattle, Coinme is a U.S.-regulated digital asset payments company offering crypto-as-a-service and stablecoin and crypto payment infrastructure for enterprises, fintechs, wallets, and payment applications.

Coinme is licensed and operates in 48 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico, and has built systems designed to handle fiat-to-crypto and stablecoin payments at scale while meeting U.S. regulatory requirements.

Coinme provides capabilities that partners integrate into their products. These capabilities, delivered as a set of APIs or SDKs, include KYC, payments by debit card, bank transfer, or cash, converting between fiat and crypto, trading, and custody, so partners can offer end-to-end crypto and stablecoin features embedded in their own applications.

Coinme also supports a large cash-to-crypto network through partnerships, providing the software and compliance layer that enables cash on-ramps and off-ramps at 50,000+ locations across the U.S.

Coinme serves more than one million users and has processed more than $1.3 billion in total transactions since it launched. Its enterprise customers include Coinstar, Exodus, Mercuryo, Baanx, and Breeze.

Coinme was co-founded by CEO Neil Bergquist and has raised $41M in equity funding from Pantera, Digital Currency Group, Coinstar, Circle, and MoneyGram.

Coinme competitors include: ZeroHash, MoonPay, Bridge | Stripe, Banxa | OSL, and Paxos.

Buyer: Polygon Labs
Polygon was founded in 2017 as Matic Network and is actively undergoing an evolution in its product offering. Polygon Labs, formed in 2023, is responsible for supporting the development of the Polygon ecosystem, with a focus on fast, low-cost blockchain infrastructure for payments.

Polygon is now building the Open Money Stack, an integrated set of services designed to move money instantly and reliably, globally. It combines blockchain settlement on the Polygon network with core payment components like wallets, stablecoin integrations, cross-chain connectivity, and compliance tooling, to keep funds on-chain so they can be used across on-chain financial applications.

To make this work across many different blockchains, Polygon Labs is building AggLayer, a settlement layer meant to help different blockchains connect and exchange value with each other quickly and at low cost, reducing the need for separate, disconnected systems.

Polygon is a listed token with a current fully diluted value of $1.6B. Polygonscan shows more than 6.2 billion total transactions on Polygon. Polygon’s website also points to scale indicators like billions of dollars of stablecoins on the network, millions of transactions per day on average, and monthly payment volume, and describes Polygon as infrastructure that can support “trillions” of value moving through it.

The company was co-founded by Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal, Mihailo Bjelic, and Anurag Arjun, and is currently led by CEO Marc Boiron, who was appointed in 2023.

Historically, in 2021, Polygon acquired zero-knowledge cryptography companies Mir and Hermez for $400M and $250M, respectively, but these are no longer aligned with the company’s Open Money Stack vision.

Transaction Parameters
Polygon Labs is acquiring Coinme for an undisclosed amount. In combination with another acquisition, Sequence, simultaneously announced by Polygon today. The combined acquisition value is around $250M. This marks one of the first examples of a protocol acquiring an operating business. The Coinme transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026.

Architect Partners served as the exclusive financial advisor to Coinme.

Notable comparable transactions include OSL | Banxa for $62M (M&A Alert), Nuvei | Simplex for $250M (M&A Alert), Ripple | Rail for $200M (M&A Alert), Stripe | Bridge for $1.1B (M&A Alert), MoonPay | Iron for $100M (M&A Alert), and MoonPay | Helio for $175M (M&A Alert).

Strategic Rationale
Polygon is acquiring Coinme and Sequence to move from being a settlement rail to owning the full experience of how money comes on-chain, moves on-chain, and settles back into the real world. The combination of Coinme’s licensed payments offering with Sequence’s wallet and payments orchestration stack gives Polygon an end‑to‑end, regulated crypto payments platform that spans physical kiosks, embedded wallets, and cross‑chain routing.

On Day 1, Polygon can take this integrated “crypto‑as‑a‑service” solution to banks, PSPs, neobanks, and fintechs who want compliant, turnkey stablecoin and token payments without building their own licensing, infrastructure, or user experience.

Architect Partners’ Observations
This acquisition(s) underscores a broader inflection point in the blockchain protocol market: technological performance and scalability alone will not win. The integration of real-world rails and the ability to deliver end-to-end value for mainstream users are becoming table stakes. As the market matures, competitive advantage is shifting toward owning the commercialization layer, including regulated fiat access, compliance operations, distribution channels, partner integrations, and strong product integration.

Networks that rely entirely on third-party providers risk commoditization, margin leakage, inconsistent user experience, and strategic dependency, just as stablecoins and tokenized products begin to drive meaningful transaction volume and the corresponding revenue opportunities.
Polygon’s actions show they fully understand the importance of this approach.

Sources
Polygon Press Release
Architect Partner M&A Tracker
PitchBook

Uncategorized

Alchemy Acquires Bware Labs for an Undisclosed Amount

Steve Payne
September 1st, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Transaction Overview

On August 29, 2024, Web3 development platform Alchemy announced its acquisition of Bware Labs, also a Web3 development platform that provides blockchain infrastructure and API services, for an undisclosed amount. 

 

Target: Bware Labs

Bware Labs is a Web3 infrastructure company that supports over thirty blockchain networks and operates more than 44 validators. The company serves over 100 enterprise customers, including CoinGecko, Fantom, and Connext. Bware Labs has formed strategic partnerships with leading blockchain projects such as Avalanche, Polygon, and Astar.

 

The company’s key offerings include the Blast API, which connects developers to 101 networks and 48 chains, along with various validator and bridging services, faucet connections, and governance proposals. Other offerings include App Chains, an application-specific blockchain that allows developers to specify their projects’ economies, governance, and consensus algorithms through features such as Enterprise Validator, dedicated RPC endpoints, and indexing.

 

In 2023, Bware Labs launched the $INFRA token.. The fully diluted market cap of $INFRA as of 9/1/2024 was $21.8M and the total circulating supply of 100M. Key allocations include 12.2M for the seed round, 12M for a Series A round, 20M for treasury, and 25M for protocol incentives. 

 

Bware Labs was founded in Romania in 2021 by Flavian Manea, Alexandru Minulescu, Matei Popp, and Radu Enoiu, and now has over 45 employees, mostly developers/engineers. The company raised a total of $6.9M in token and equity funding, with $900K in a Seed round led by Ascensive Assets and $6M in a Series A round with investors such as The Spartan Group, Woodstock Fund, Nexo, and Nabais Capital. Bware was last valued at $50M post-money in their Series A.

 

Buyer: Alchemy 

Alchemy is a Web3 development platform that provides blockchain infrastructure and tools, such as APIs, SDKs, and node management, to support the development of decentralized applications across multiple blockchains. Alchemy has facilitated over $100 billion in on-chain transaction volume, paid $1.5 billion in royalties to NFT creators, has had over 100 million end users, and supports projects such as OpenSea, Axie Infinity, Polygon, and WorldCoin.

 

Their main offerings include APIs that support tokens, NFTs, transactions, and Web3 development for developers and infrastructure for rollups, integrations, and subgraphs for various blockchains. The company supports enterprise, NFT, gaming, and DeFi projects. 

 

Alchemy was founded in 2013 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau and now has over 280 employees. The company has raised $564M over five funding rounds in April 2019, December 2019, April 2021, October 2021, and February 2022, from lead investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Silver Lake, a16z, Coatue, and Addition, as well as angel investors like Peter Thiel, Will Smith, and Reid Hoffman. Alchemy was valued at $10.2B post-money in their last funding round.

 

Transaction Parameters

Alchemy agreed to acquire Bware for an undisclosed amount but revealed that it is their largest acquisition to date, increasing their headcount by 25%.

 

Alchemy has announced it will not take over Bware’s INFRA protocol and Bware announced that it will be stepping away from its role as a core contributor to the technology supported by the $INFRA token. 

 

Strategic Rationale

Alchemy’s acquisition of Bware Labs aims to enhance its blockchain infrastructure and expand globally. By integrating Bware Labs’ Blast API and decentralized infrastructure, Alchemy strengthens its platform and broadens its customer base through Bware’s existing partnerships with major blockchain networks like Polygon and Avalanche. Furthermore, the acquisition provides a path for Alchemy’s expansion into Europe. Bware’s presence in Europe, which is leading in crypto regulation via its MiCA rules, also offers a gateway to entry into other markets in the region.

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

This transaction makes strategic sense for Alchemy.  And as a leader in Web3 infrastructure with players like Consensys it has the capacity to start filling in holes in its delivery capabilities.

 

The Web2 hyperscalers all currently offer some Web3 infrastructure to  developers (usually covering only a handful of chains), and we expect to see them more active in M&A as demand for Web3 grows.