Team Vitality’s apEX leads with most trophies and kills at Majors

In a sport where careers often burn bright and fade fast, Dan “apEX” Madesclaire has done something unusual: he stuck around long enough to become the most decorated player in Counter-Strike Major history. Four Major titles. Over 37 significant trophies. Approximately 2,800 kills across 21+ Major tournaments.

And in an industry where crypto sponsorships once rained down like confetti at a championship celebration, apEX and Team Vitality have exactly zero blockchain partnerships to show for it.

The record that keeps growing

apEX’s Major championship journey started back in 2015 at Cluj-Napoca, where he hoisted the trophy playing under the Envy banner. He reinvented himself as an in-game leader for Vitality starting in 2020 and turned the French-international roster into a consistent contender. The payoff arrived at the Paris Major in 2023, a home-crowd victory that felt almost cinematic.

Two more Major titles followed in quick succession: Austin 2025 and Budapest 2025. Three Majors in roughly two years, all as the shot-caller, across two different versions of the game, CS:GO and its successor CS2.

His total trophy haul now exceeds 37 significant wins, including over 30 at the S-tier level. apEX has played in more than 21 Major tournaments. With approximately 2,800 Major kills accumulated over a career spanning more than a decade, apEX sits atop the all-time leaderboard.

The crypto gap in esports sponsorship

Despite being one of the most visible figures in competitive gaming, apEX has no documented crypto tokens, NFTs, or blockchain partnerships tied to his name. Team Vitality, one of Europe’s largest esports organizations, similarly lacks crypto exchange sponsors during its Major tournament runs.

This is notable because the esports industry was, not long ago, awash in crypto money. FTX had its name plastered across teams and tournaments before its spectacular collapse. Crypto.com and Coinbase ran aggressive sponsorship campaigns targeting gaming audiences. Several high-profile crypto sponsorships in esports ended badly, either through exchange failures, token collapses, or reputational damage that made organizations skittish about the entire category.

In June 2026, apEX secured a personal sponsorship deal with Oakley, the eyewear brand. The absence of crypto exchange sponsors at IEM Cologne has been confirmed through detailed analysis, a stark contrast to the landscape just a few years earlier when such partnerships were nearly ubiquitous at top-tier tournaments.

What this means for crypto and esports investors

Teams and players watched what happened when volatile digital asset companies became title sponsors. When those companies imploded, they took sponsorship revenue and credibility with them.

apEX’s career arc illustrates this directly. He has achieved four Major titles and 37+ significant trophies without a single blockchain partnership. His brand value comes from performance and longevity, the kinds of fundamentals that traditional sponsors like Oakley find attractive. Any future partnership will need to offer genuine utility to fans and organizations, not just cash injections backed by speculative token economics.

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