ConsenSys, the leading Ethereum and decentralized protocols software company with a wide range of popular product suites such as the famous MetaMask, as well as Infura and Truffle, announced it was about to raise $450 million in a Series D funding round.
The funding round was led by ParaFi Capital with participation from other notable new investors such as Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures. The deal saw the firm’s valuation more than double from $3.2 billion in November 2021, where the firm raised $200 million in a Series C funding round to currently stand at over $7 billion.
According to the announcement, proceeds from the round will, in part, be converted to Ether (ETH) to rebalance the ratio of ETH to United States dollar equivalents in ConsenSys’ treasury. The firm actively seeks to use its own financial infrastructure to earn yields on such assets in decentralized finance (DeFi), protocols and via staking.
What they are saying
Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of ConsenSys, gave the following remarks regarding the development; “I think of ConsenSys as a broad and deep capabilities machine for the decentralized protocols ecosystem, able to rapidly capitalize at scale on fundamental new constructs that emerge. […] This view has resonated with our crypto native and growth investors in a Series D that will enable us to execute powerful growth strategies.”
What you should know
- The announcement also reveals that the proceeds will support the expansion of MetaMask, with a major redesign scheduled for release later in 2022 and the roll-out of a plug-in extensibility system that will allow integration with a wide variety of blockchain protocols and account security schemes.
- The announcement revealed that MetaMask hit a new milestone as the self-custodial wallet surpassed 30 million monthly average users, representing an increase of 42% in four months from the 21 million it hit in November. With the wallet, users can mint and collect nonfungible tokens, join decentralized autonomous organizations, and participate in DeFi protocols.
- Meanwhile, the company touts that more than 430,000 developers are using the Ethereum development platform Infura. Its Ethereum API now supports more than $1 trillion in annualized on-chain ETH transaction volume.
- The funding is also expected to support the hiring of over 600 new employees globally and continued reinvestment in development and tooling for the extended Ethereum ecosystem.
