In 2022, Mara looked like one of Africa’s crypto startups to watch. It had raised $23 million from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Alameda Research, planned to launch a crypto wallet and its own blockchain, and wanted to build what it called a gateway into Africa’s growing crypto economy.
Two years later, the picture was very different. TechCabal reported that Mara had lost $15.9 million in 2022, struggled to raise more funding, went through major leadership changes and eventually ran out of cash. The company’s story is a useful example of both the opportunity in Africa’s crypto market and the difficulty of turning a big Web3 vision into a sustainable business.
Why Mara entered Africa’s crypto market
Mara was founded in 2021 by Chinyere “Chi” Nnadi, Lucas Llinás Múnera, Kate Kallot and Dearg O’Bartuin. The company was built around the idea that Africans needed better access to crypto products and infrastructure designed with the continent’s financial realities in mind.
For Nnadi, the idea came partly from his earlier work at Sustainability International, where he had worked on development projects and encountered challenges around getting capital to communities. He later became interested in how blockchain could be used as infrastructure for moving money and tracking transactions, rather than simply as a new type of investment asset.
That thinking shaped Mara’s original plan. The company wanted to give Africans a simple way to buy, sell and hold crypto while also creating infrastructure that developers could use to build blockchain applications for the continent.
The $23 million bet on Mara
Mara attracted serious investor attention early in its life. In May 2022, the company announced a $23 million funding round involving Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Distributed Global, TQ Ventures, DIGITAL, Nexo, Huobi Ventures, Day One Ventures and other investors
At the time, the funding was a major vote of confidence in Mara’s model. The company said it wanted to use the capital to build a range of products that could help more Africans participate in the crypto economy, starting with Nigeria and Kenya.
The plan was also much bigger than a normal crypto exchange. Mara intended to launch a consumer wallet, a professional trading platform and Mara Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain that developers could use to build decentralised applications.
That ambition gave the company a strong story for investors, but it also meant Mara was attempting to build several complicated products at the same time.
Mara Wallet brings the vision to consumers
Mara Wallet was eventually launched in 2022 as the company’s consumer-facing product. Fortune reported that the wallet allowed users to buy, send, sell and withdraw fiat currency and cryptocurrencies, with support for major crypto assets.
The wallet was designed around the African market rather than simply copying the experience of a Western crypto exchange. Mara’s leadership presented money transfers and access to financial products as important parts of the company’s proposition, particularly because crypto usage in Africa extends beyond trading and speculation.
That distinction was important because African users have often used crypto for different reasons, including cross-border transfers and access to digital assets denominated in dollars. Mara wanted to build around those existing behaviours while making crypto easier for people who were not already familiar with the technology.
Mara wanted to build more than a wallet
The wallet was only one part of the original strategy. Mara also planned Mara Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain designed to provide infrastructure for developers building decentralised applications in Africa.
The company also planned a professional exchange for more experienced traders, with additional trading features beyond those available on its retail product. The idea was to create an ecosystem where users could enter through the wallet, while developers and professional traders could use other parts of the platform.
That model made Mara more ambitious than a typical crypto brokerage. It was trying to build the consumer application, trading infrastructure and blockchain underneath the ecosystem at the same time.
The African market Mara was targeting
Mara entered a market where crypto adoption was already significant. In its 2022 reporting on the company, TechCrunch cited Chainalysis data showing that cryptocurrency usage in sub-Saharan Africa had grown sharply, making the region one of the world’s fastest-growing crypto markets at the time.
Nigeria and Kenya were particularly important to Mara’s initial strategy. Both markets had active technology communities and growing interest in crypto, while their financial systems also presented challenges that blockchain companies believed they could address.
Mara was therefore not inventing demand from scratch. The company was entering an existing market and betting that a locally focused platform could make crypto easier to access while also building products specifically for African users.
Mara also wanted to work with governments
Mara’s ambitions extended beyond consumers and developers. The company announced a partnership with the Central African Republic, which had become the first African country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, and said it would advise the government on crypto strategy and infrastructure.
Nnadi also talked about helping governments understand crypto regulation, KYC and anti-money laundering requirements. Mara argued that crypto adoption was already happening across Africa, and governments would eventually need systems that allowed them to regulate the industry rather than simply ignore it.
This approach reflected the company’s larger ambition. Mara did not want to operate only as a consumer application; it wanted to become part of the infrastructure around Africa’s emerging digital-asset economy.
Where things started to go wrong
The problem was not that Mara lacked ambition or investor interest. According to TechCabal, the company spent heavily while it was still developing its products and recorded a $15.9 million loss in 2022, despite having no revenue that year because its product had not yet launched. (TechCabal)
The same report, based on an audited financial statement sent to investors, said Mara spent $9.1 million on salaries, bonuses and allowances in 2022 and had about 130 employees. By the end of that year, the company reportedly had only about $5 million in cash remaining. (TechCabal)
That level of spending became particularly difficult because the crypto market was changing. The easy funding environment of 2021 had disappeared, while the collapse of major crypto companies and the wider crypto downturn made investors much more cautious.
Raising the next round became difficult
Mara needed additional capital to continue operating, but raising money became much harder in 2023. TechCabal reported that the company spoke with investors about raising between $2 million and $5 million, but those efforts did not result in a new funding round.
The departure of several co-founders also created additional pressure. According to TechCabal, three co-founders left in early 2023, leaving Nnadi as the remaining founder running the company, while Mara also reduced its team twice as it tried to cut costs.
This was a major change from the picture presented when Mara raised its $23 million round. The company had gone from being a well-funded startup preparing to build an entire crypto ecosystem to a company trying to preserve enough cash to keep operating.
The problem with the user numbers
Mara also faced questions about its reported user numbers.
When Mara Wallet launched in February 2023, its leadership said it had four million verified users, according to TechCabal. But the publication reported that a former executive claimed at least 75% of those accounts were fraudulent, allegedly because the company’s referral programme encouraged people to create fake accounts. TechCabal presented that as a claim from a former executive, not an independently verified fact. The distinction matters because user numbers are one of the easiest metrics for a startup to use when presenting growth. A large registration figure does not necessarily mean that people are actively using a product, trading assets or generating revenue.
For a financial platform, active users and transaction volume are much more meaningful indicators of product-market fit than registrations alone.
The leadership crisis
Mara’s financial problems were accompanied by serious internal disagreements.
TechCabal reported that former executives accused Nnadi of spending company funds without sufficient oversight and questioned the circumstances surrounding the creation of a new company called Jara. Those are allegations made by former executives and should not be treated as facts; Nnadi did not respond to multiple requests for comment from TechCabal for its report.
By 2024, the Mara brand had effectively disappeared, according to TechCabal’s reporting. The publication reported that Nnadi had registered Jara and that Mara users were encouraged to download the new Jara app, which was described as a non-custodial crypto wallet.
That development marked a significant break from the original Mara story. A company that had raised millions to build a Pan-African crypto ecosystem was now dealing with the consequences of financial pressure, leadership departures and an unsuccessful attempt to secure additional funding.
The FTX connection made the timing worse
Mara’s story was also caught up in the collapse of FTX.
Alameda Research, the trading firm associated with FTX, was one of the investors in Mara’s $23 million funding round. The investment was announced months before FTX collapsed in November 2022, at a time when the crypto industry was still attracting large amounts of venture capital.
FTX’s collapse did not cause all of Mara’s problems, but it happened at a particularly difficult time for the startup. Mara was already facing high expenses and needed additional funding, while the broader crypto market had become far less friendly to companies seeking fresh capital.
For a young startup, losing access to follow-on funding can be just as damaging as losing customers.
Mara correctly identified that Africa’s crypto market needed products built around local conditions. Crypto in Africa was not simply about buying tokens and waiting for prices to rise; users were also interested in transfers, payments, savings and access to assets that could protect against local currency volatility. The company also understood that education and infrastructure would matter if crypto adoption was going to grow. Its original plan combined a consumer wallet with developer infrastructure and a professional exchange, suggesting that Mara saw the market as an ecosystem rather than a single trading product. (TechCrunch)
What Mara got right
That thesis was reasonable. The difficulty was turning such a broad plan into a business that could control its costs, retain its leadership team, attract active users and generate enough revenue to survive.
Where Mara’s model struggled
The clearest weakness was the gap between the size of Mara’s ambition and the resources required to execute it. Building a wallet is already complicated, but building a wallet, exchange and Layer 1 blockchain at the same time requires substantial engineering, compliance, security, marketing and operational resources.
Mara’s financial records show what happened when those costs became too high. TechCabal reported that the company spent $15.9 million more than it earned in 2022 and had only around $5 million in cash at the end of that year
The wider market made the situation harder. Once crypto prices fell and venture investors became more cautious, companies could no longer assume that another large funding round would arrive before the existing cash ran out.
That is an important lesson for Web3 startups across Africa. A strong market narrative can attract investors, but the company still needs disciplined spending, a clear revenue model and a product that people use consistently.
What happened to Mara’s original vision?
Mara’s original vision was never simply to become another crypto exchange. It wanted to create financial infrastructure that would allow African consumers to access crypto, African developers to build blockchain products and businesses to participate in a growing digital economy.
Some of those ideas were reflected in the products Mara announced and launched, particularly Mara Wallet. But the wider ecosystem it planned, including Mara Chain and a professional exchange, did not develop into the large Pan-African infrastructure platform the company originally described.
By 2024, reporting around the company was focused less on its expansion plans and more on its financial difficulties, leadership breakdown and transition towards Jara.
That makes it important to separate what Mara planned from what it ultimately delivered.
The bigger lesson for African Web3
Mara’s story does not mean the opportunity it identified was wrong. African crypto adoption has continued to develop, and the need for reliable products that address payments, cross-border transactions and access to digital assets remains.
What Mara shows is that identifying a large market is only the first step. Building for that market requires a sustainable company behind the product, especially when the business operates in an industry where regulation, security, liquidity and infrastructure can be expensive.
The startup’s experience also shows why founders need to be careful about building too many products too early. A wallet, exchange and blockchain can each become a company on their own, and trying to build all three before establishing a strong core business can stretch capital and management capacity.
What Mara leaves behind
Mara’s rise was fast. Within roughly a year of its founding, it had attracted major investors and positioned itself as a company that could help shape Africa’s crypto economy. Its $23 million funding round placed it among the better-funded African Web3 startups of that period.
Its decline was just as striking. By 2024, TechCabal reported that Mara had run out of cash, lost much of its leadership team and was effectively being replaced by Jara.
The story is therefore bigger than one failed crypto startup. Mara identified a real problem, entered a real market and attracted real investor confidence, but it could not turn that opportunity into a sustainable business.