NextBlock Research
Investment Thesis
NextBlock is a Luxembourg-based venture capital firm that invests exclusively in blockchain. Its website describes the mission as accelerating the world's transition to blockchain technology. Third-party profiles describe a thesis-driven focus on the intersection of blockchain and programmable cryptography, including privacy infrastructure, zero-knowledge proofs and multiparty computation. The firm also publishes a research page that links to technical explainers from its portfolio and ecosystem, such as Celestia on modular data availability, Forta on blockchain cybersecurity, Notabene on the crypto travel rule, and Consensys on EigenLayer restaking.
Stage Focus
The founder's LinkedIn headline describes backing blockchain and cryptography-native projects from pre-seed onward. The firm's most recent announced deal is a full seed round, so seed is the stage with the best evidence. The website does not state a formal stage mandate, and no source in this run confirms a later-stage range.
Check Size
No check size range is published. Two data points exist: a $3M investment that funded the whole of Soda Labs' seed round (announced 8 October 2026), and a EUR 2.5M investment into Bit2Me alongside Tether, per the firm's LinkedIn page. Check size fields are left empty rather than inferred from two deals.
Lead Tendency
The Soda Labs round was funded entirely by NextBlock, and press coverage describes NextBlock as leading it. The Bit2Me investment was made alongside Tether, which led that round. The evidence points to a mix, so lead tendency is recorded as both.
Recent Activity
- October 2026: invested $3M to fund Soda Labs' full seed round. Soda Labs builds Bubble, a privacy layer that lets financial institutions use public blockchains while keeping amounts, balances and counterparties confidential. It combines multiparty computation with garbled circuits and runs on Coti, Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum and Base.
- July 2025: Linklaters announced it advised NextBlock Ventures on launching its first Luxembourg alternative investment fund for blockchain and crypto investments.
- 2025 to 2026: the portfolio page shows new logos added in mid-2026, including Bit2Me and Velocity (June 2026) and Soda Labs and Rayls (August 2026).
Portfolio Highlights
The website lists seven investments: Soda Labs, Celestia, Consensys, Bit2Me, Notabene, Rayls and Velocity. Celestia is a modular data availability network. Consensys is the company behind MetaMask and Infura. Bit2Me is a Spanish crypto exchange that reported EUR 22.1M revenue and 1.3M clients, with Tether leading a EUR 30M round. Notabene builds travel rule compliance for crypto. Rayls is a blockchain for institutional finance that has tokenized receivables. PitchBook counts nine investments, so the website list may be incomplete.
Team
- Pieter Van Poecke, Founder and General Partner
- Nikolai Khatiukhin, Associate
- Gustavo Ljungberg, Head of Investor Relations
- Danielle Merendino, PA to Founder and GP (not an investor, not submitted)
Decision Process
The firm is run by a single founder and general partner, so decisions most likely sit with him. This is an inference from the team page; the firm does not describe its process.
Founder Preferences
Quoting the Soda Labs announcement, the founder cited a working product and existing paying customers as reasons to invest. That suggests a preference for teams with shipped technology and early revenue, though it is one data point.
Geographic Focus
The firm is based in Bertrange, Luxembourg. Its portfolio spans Europe, the US and Latin America (Soda Labs, Celestia, Consensys, Bit2Me in Spain, Rayls linked to Brazilian developer Parfin), so there is no evident geographic restriction. Blockchain is the only stated constraint.