Ownership & Funding

Blockchain Academics is privately owned, founded and led by Wael Rajab. There are no outside venture investors. There is no parent conglomerate, no holding company anonymizing the chain of control, and no editorial board appointed by a financial sponsor.

The founder retains majority ownership. Equity granted to staff, contributors, or advisors does not affect editorial independence (see Editorial Independence below).

Blockchain Academics is bootstrapped and self-funded. Revenue comes from:

• API access — paid tiers of our public REST API and MCP server (developers, agencies, AI agent operators).
• Newsletter sponsorship — clearly labelled in the newsletter, separated from editorial content.
• Sponsored research & explainers — commissioned long-form research and explainer commissions are labelled as such and are not produced by the news editorial team.
• Educational partnerships — the Academy (learn-to-earn courses) is funded through partnerships with protocols and exchanges. Course content has its own disclosure on each course page.

We do not accept payment for news coverage, no exceptions. Sponsored content is never written by the news editorial team and is always labelled.

The founder operates several other crypto businesses. Each is legally separate from Blockchain Academics, but the relationships create potential conflicts that are disclosed here:

• DEXTools — on-chain trading data and charting platform. The founder is a former senior leader. Coverage of DEXTools is disclosed in any article that touches it.
• DEXT Force Ventures — an early-stage crypto venture fund. Holdings are disclosed at /financial-disclosures and called out in any article touching a portfolio company.
• BCA Studio — a production agency that builds editorial and marketing operations for crypto companies. The news editorial team does not cover BCA Studio clients without explicit disclosure in the article footer.

Editorial decisions are made by the editorial team and not by the founder, the sales function, partnerships, or any sister entity. This is structural, not aspirational:

• The editor of record has authority to publish or kill any story.
• Sponsored content is produced by a separate team and labelled. Sponsors do not see, edit, or approve news coverage.
• Conflicts that cannot be managed are escalated to recusal — the writer or editor is removed from that story.
• Annual self-review of any flagged conflict cases — with corrections published if a conflict influenced coverage.

Full conflict-of-interest rules at /editorial-standards#conflicts. Holdings disclosure thresholds at /editorial-standards#holdings.

Blockchain Academics Inc. is registered in Canada with operations based in Toronto. We comply with applicable Canadian and US publishing law, including defamation, copyright, and securities publication regulations. Specific regulatory questions can be directed to [email protected].

We publish a transparency note when our coverage results in a retraction, a substantive correction, or a flagged conflict. The full corrections log lives at /corrections.