To get covered by The Block or Blockworks in 2026, you need a hard data point, a primary source willing to go on record, and a news angle that matters to institutional traders and allocators rather than retail holders. Narrative alone gets you nowhere with either newsroom. The Block runs on scoops and proprietary data. Blockworks runs on market structure, rates, and macro. Know which one fits your story before you write a single word of a pitch.

I run fractional PR for Web3, DePIN and AI founders, and the question I hear most from teams with genuine institutional traction is some version of: we have real news, why are The Block and Blockworks not covering us? The answer is almost never that the story is bad. It is usually that the pitch treats those outlets like general crypto media, uses the same angle built for a retail audience, or lands without the data layer that makes either newsroom feel the story is worth reporting rather than just publishing. This guide is the operator's breakdown of how to fix that.

Why these two outlets are not interchangeable

The Block and Blockworks both serve institutional crypto audiences, and both carry weight with funds, allocators and serious builders. But they are not the same outlet, and pitching them as if they are is the first way to fail with both. Understanding the culture of each newsroom is not a nice-to-have. It is prerequisite work.

The Block was built on a data-and-scoop model. Its Research division is the brand inside the brand: the on-chain analytics, the funding databases, the proprietary datasets that traders and analysts pay for. The editorial team operates inside that culture. Reporters at The Block are drawn to stories that either break first or that have a data layer nobody else has published. They want to be the record of what happened in crypto at the institutional level, and they are rigorous about sourcing, similar to a financial wire service. The outlet has grown its reputation through stories that required actual reporting, not just curation of press releases, and the reporters remember when they got burned by a founder who oversold a milestone.

Blockworks is oriented around markets, macro and the mechanics of institutional capital. The flagship properties, Blockworks News and the Macro show, are aimed at people managing money: DeFi yield traders, ETF allocators, macro funds with crypto exposure, TradFi desks navigating digital assets. Blockworks reporters want to understand how a development changes the flow of capital, affects rates, or creates a structural shift. A story about protocol fundamentals lands there only when the reporter can translate it into a market consequence. The outlet also has a podcast network (Empire, The Chopping Block, Forward Guidance) that is genuinely influential for institutional distribution, and that layer is often more achievable than a written piece, especially for founders earlier in their press history.

Field ruleThe Block wants to know what happened first, with proof. Blockworks wants to know what it means for the market, with a named source who manages money. Pitch the wrong one of those and you are not pitching at all.

The reporter map: who covers what in 2026

Neither outlet has a massive staff, and beats are real. Spraying the same pitch to every reporter at both publications is one of the faster ways to get permanently filtered out. The following is a working beat map based on published bylines and editorial focus as of mid-2026. Always check recent bylines before pitching, because beats shift when reporters move.

Outlet Beat area What actually lands here
The Block Funding and deals Raises with named investors and verified round size; M&A; token sales with disclosed terms
The Block On-chain data and research Original datasets, protocol metrics, TVL movements with data sourcing; anything The Block Research can extend
The Block Regulation and policy Court filings, SEC/CFTC actions, legislative developments, named legal sources
The Block Infrastructure and L1/L2 Mainnet launches with verifiable on-chain proof; DePIN activations with node counts or coverage data
Blockworks Markets and macro Capital flow analysis, ETF mechanics, rate environment and crypto, TradFi-to-DeFi bridges
Blockworks DeFi and yield Protocol changes with quantified yield impact, liquidity migration stories, fee model shifts
Blockworks Institutional and enterprise Named corporate adopters, tokenization (RWA) with deal terms, custody and prime brokerage
Blockworks Podcast network Founder or operator with a genuine market POV, not a product pitch; must be articulate under follow-up questioning

What gets passed, and why

Both newsrooms have sharp filters. Knowing what automatically goes into the bin saves time for everyone.

At The Block: anything that reads like a press release, any "partnership" without clear terms or named counterparties, any on-chain metric that cannot be independently verified, any exclusive offer that has already been sent to CoinDesk or Cointelegraph first. The Block reporters will check whether they are actually first. If they find the story was offered elsewhere, that relationship is often over. The outlet also does not run sponsored coverage dressed as editorial, and the reporters know the difference immediately.

At Blockworks: protocol news with no market angle, anything aimed primarily at retail, product announcements without a named institutional user or a quantifiable market impact, and pitch emails that open with the company's background before stating the news. Blockworks editors are looking for the market consequence in the first sentence. If they have to read to the third paragraph to find it, the pitch is already dead.

The common failure modeBoth outlets get dozens of pitches daily that open with "We are excited to announce..." followed by three paragraphs of company context and a buried data point at the end. Invert this structure entirely. The news and the primary data point go in sentence one. Context is a paragraph near the bottom. The reporter will cut to the data anyway; make their job easier by putting it first.

Building a pitch that works for The Block

The Block pitch has one job: establish that your story has information the outlet does not already have, and that the information is verifiable. The mechanics are as follows.

Start with the data. If you have on-chain metrics, a verified round size, a named lead investor, or a dataset nobody has published, that is the first sentence. "RARI Chain's mainnet launched with verifiable on-chain proof of [metric]" is a opener. "We are thrilled to share our mainnet launch" is not. The RARI Chain campaign, which I ran, generated 11 tier-1 placements in 24 hours precisely because the announcement carried hard proof, named participants and a data layer that reporters could verify independently and extend with their own analysis.

Offer true exclusivity, and mean it. The Block operates on a first-to-publish culture. An exclusive offer means this reporter and this outlet get a defined window, typically 24 to 48 hours, before anyone else sees it. If you offer an exclusive and then pitch CoinDesk the same morning, you have ended the relationship. If you want broad simultaneous pickup, that is an embargo and a different conversation. Understand which play you are running before you send anything. The mechanics of exclusives versus embargoes are covered in detail in the CoinDesk placement guide.

Have a primary source ready. The Block does not run single-source stories on significant claims. Have a named investor, a named partner, or a named industry figure available to confirm the story on record. If your primary source will only speak off the record, that significantly weakens what the reporter can publish. Prep your sources before the pitch goes out, not after.

Pitch structure for The Block

  1. Subject line: the news fact in plain language, no marketing language, no adjectives
  2. Opening sentence: the hard fact, the date it is true, and the verifiable metric
  3. Second sentence: why it matters at a market or infrastructure level
  4. Third sentence: who the named sources are and whether you can offer exclusivity
  5. One short paragraph of context, then your contact information
  6. Total length: under 180 words. The reporter will ask for more if they want it.

Building a pitch that works for Blockworks

The Blockworks pitch needs a market consequence as its centre of gravity. Every other element exists to support that.

Lead with the market angle. What does this development do to capital flows, to yield, to risk pricing, to institutional allocation behaviour? If you cannot answer that question in one sentence, the pitch is not ready for Blockworks. A mainnet launch that shifts $X of TVL, a rate model change that moves yield by Y basis points, a tokenization deal that brings a named TradFi institution onto a chain for the first time: those are Blockworks stories. A mainnet launch by itself is not.

Name your institutional sources. Blockworks reporters want sources who manage money or who represent named institutional counterparties. A founder explaining why their own protocol matters is not a Blockworks source. A fund manager, an allocator, an ETF issuer, or a TradFi desk lead commenting on the development is. If you have those sources warm and willing to go on record, lead with that fact in the pitch. It is often the single thing that converts a pass into a response.

Consider the podcast route seriously. Getting booked on Empire, The Chopping Block, or Forward Guidance is often more achievable than a written piece for a founder without a long Blockworks history, and the distribution is genuinely institutional. Podcast pitches go to the show producers, not the reporters, and they are evaluated on whether the guest can hold a 45-minute conversation without pitching their product every third sentence. Have a genuine market point of view, be willing to be challenged, and come with data you have not published elsewhere.

Podcast pitch structure for BlockworksThree sentences: (1) the founder's specific market POV and why it is different from the consensus, (2) what they have seen in their own data that supports that POV, (3) why the show's audience would care right now. Attach one prior media appearance or written piece so the producer can hear the voice. No pitch deck, no product one-pager.

The data layer: why both outlets care about it differently

Neither The Block nor Blockworks will take a story on a founder's word alone. Both have been burned enough times by crypto companies that overstated metrics, understated risks, or quietly revised numbers after publication. The data layer is not just about proof; it is about the reporter's professional credibility. If they publish your metric and it turns out to be wrong, that is on them. The bar has moved up significantly since 2022, and where that bar sits now is roughly where mainstream financial journalism was a decade ago.

For The Block, the data layer means on-chain verifiability or third-party confirmation. A funding round needs to be confirmed by the lead investor. A TVL figure needs a named data source (DeFiLlama, Dune, Messari, or the outlet's own research). An active user count needs a methodology statement. If you have original data that nobody else can pull, that is a genuine competitive edge in a pitch, because it gives the reporter something to build a story around that they cannot get from a press release.

For Blockworks, the data layer is often market-level rather than protocol-level. What does the DEX volume look like over the last 30 days? What is the TVL trend? What yield are depositors actually earning versus the headline rate? Reporters who cover markets want to see that a founder understands the market context they are operating in, not just the protocol mechanics. Come with those numbers, even if the reporter does not ask for them. The ones who run tier-1 stories are the ones who make the reporter's job easier, not harder.

For a worked example of what this looks like in practice, see the RARI Chain case study, where the combination of verifiable on-chain data and pre-briefed sources led to 11 tier-1 placements in the first 24 hours after mainnet.

The relationship layer: what actually moves these outlets

The block and Blockworks reporters are not waiting for your pitch. They have stories they are already working. The founders who get covered consistently are the ones who have made themselves useful to reporters before they had news to place, and who understand that a relationship built over time is worth more than a single perfect pitch sent cold.

Useful things you can do without having news: respond to a reporter's public data request on X, flag a dataset they might not have seen, send a brief note when their story contained an error with the correct data (politely and factually, not as a complaint), or offer a background briefing on a topic they are actively covering. A 15-minute background call where a founder explains how a technical mechanism works, with no ask attached, is worth more for the long-term relationship than ten pitch emails.

This is also where the tier-1 PR trap bites most founders: they treat tier-1 media as a distribution channel rather than a relationship, pitch only when they have something to promote, and wonder why the response rate is near zero. The founders who get called by reporters, rather than the other way around, are the ones who have given reporters reasons to remember them that have nothing to do with a launch.

Field rulePosition yourself as a primary source for their beats, not a subject seeking coverage. The reporters who cover institutional crypto want expert sources they can call at 9pm when a story breaks. Be the person they call, not the person they file.

Sequencing a campaign across both outlets

Most meaningful launches have enough material to generate stories at both outlets, but they require different angles and different timing. Running them together without a clear sequence is one of the most common mistakes in institutional crypto PR.

The typical sequence that works: offer The Block an exclusive on the hard news fact, with a 48-hour window. While that window is live, brief the Blockworks reporter you have identified on background, not pitching, but providing context on the market significance. When The Block story runs, the Blockworks reporter already has the context and can pitch their editor on a market-angle follow. That follow story often has a different data angle, different sources, and a different frame, so neither outlet feels like they published the same piece.

The same launch that generated the RARI Chain tier-1 run also produced follow-on coverage in outlets including Decrypt, Cointelegraph, and several regional outlets, because the initial wave of primary coverage created social proof that made the story easier for secondary reporters to justify to their editors. Tier-1 coverage compounds; each placement lowers the barrier for the next one.

For a full framework on building a multi-outlet campaign, the Web3 PR campaigns page covers how I structure retainer engagements around exactly this kind of sequenced institutional media work.

What to do if you are not ready for these outlets yet

Not every company is ready for The Block or Blockworks, and attempting a tier-1 placement before the story is strong enough is a real cost, not just a missed opportunity. Reporters remember pitches that wasted their time, and they filter out the next one faster. If your round is under $5 million with no recognizable lead, if your on-chain metrics are not yet material, or if you do not have sources who will go on record, you are likely not at the threshold yet. That is a solvable problem with the right narrative build first.

CoinDesk has a somewhat wider top-of-funnel and a broader definition of what constitutes an interesting story, particularly for ecosystem and technology pieces. Cointelegraph has strong regional syndication that can give a story real distribution even without a tier-1 landing. Decrypt is excellent for consumer-friendly protocol stories. Building a track record at those outlets first, with real placements not press release pickups, gives you the credibility and reporter relationships that make The Block and Blockworks pitches land much more reliably six months later.

The full framework for that earlier-stage work is in the CoinDesk placement guide, which covers how to build the story architecture that eventually makes a tier-1 pitch viable.

SJ
Shilika Jain

Fractional PR and ghostwriting for Web3, DePIN and AI founders. 50+ protocols placed across Forbes, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, The Block, Blockworks and AI Magazine, including the RARI Chain campaign that generated 11 tier-1 placements in 24 hours. View full profile → · Book a 30-min teardown →

Frequently asked questions

How do I get featured in crypto media outlets like The Block or Blockworks?
To get featured in institutional crypto media, you need a hard data point, a named primary source willing to go on record, and a news angle that matters to traders and allocators. The Block responds to scoops and verifiable on-chain data. Blockworks responds to market consequences and named institutional sources. Both outlets filter out press release language immediately. Pitch the right reporter on the right beat with the data up front, and keep the total pitch under 180 words.
What is the difference between pitching The Block vs Blockworks?
The Block runs on a scoop-and-data model: reporters want to be first and want independently verifiable metrics. Blockworks runs on a markets-and-macro model: reporters want to understand what a development means for capital flows, yield, and institutional allocation. The same story pitched without changes to both outlets will likely fail at both. Identify which angle you actually have before you write anything, then pitch only the outlet whose culture matches it. See the reporter beat map above for specifics.
How long does it take to get a response from The Block or Blockworks?
If a pitch is strong and lands with the right reporter, a response typically comes within 48 to 72 hours. No response within a week usually means the pitch was not compelling or went to the wrong person. Do not follow up more than once. Instead, revisit the pitch angle: either the data layer is thin, the news peg has passed, or the wrong outlet was targeted. A stronger pitch sent to the right reporter beats a good pitch followed up repeatedly to the wrong one.
Do I need a PR firm to get covered by institutional crypto media?
You do not need a firm, but you do need media relationships, a strong story, and the ability to brief reporters on background without pitching them. A fractional PR operator typically runs $5,000 to $12,000 per month and handles reporter relationships, pitch positioning, and campaign sequencing across outlets. A full agency runs $15,000 to $45,000 per month. Founders who go direct successfully usually have prior media relationships from a previous company or a background in finance where they already know the reporters.
What makes a pitch get passed at The Block or Blockworks?
At The Block: opening with company background instead of the hard fact, no verifiable data, offering an exclusive that has already been sent elsewhere, or pitching a reporter who does not cover your beat. At Blockworks: no market angle, no institutional source, pitching retail-oriented news to a market-focused outlet, or opening with "we are excited to announce." Both outlets also pass on stories where the primary claim cannot be independently verified. Fix the data layer first, then rewrite the pitch with the news fact in sentence one.

Ready to pitch institutional crypto media? Start with Web3 PR campaigns for how a retainer engagement is structured, then read how to get featured in CoinDesk for the pitch framework that transfers to every tier-1 outlet. The full library of placement guides and PR strategy playbooks is at the playbook index.