MetaMask builder ConsenSys raises $450 million at a $7 billion valuation

Ethereum software company ConsenSys, which created MetaMask, and Infura, raised an additional $450 million, doubling its valuation in four months. ConsenSys Software Inc will use its new funding to bring in more people from traditional finance.

Ethereum software company ConsenSys announced on March 15 that it has raised a $450 million Series D round led by ParaFi Capital and a host of other prominent names, including Microsoft and Softbank.

The new round values ConsenSys at more than $7 billion, which is double the valuation it received after a $200 million round four months ago.

Consensys launched in 2014 as a home for startups seeking to tap the potential of a then-new blockchain called Ethereum, and earned a reputation for both innovation and chaotic work culture. In the last two years, the company appears to have its stride thanks to the emergence of two flagship products: the Web3 wallet MetaMask and the crypto infrastructure platform Infura.

In 2020, ConsenSys Software Inc was spun out from ConsenSys Mesh, which funds and incubates crypto startups.

According to founder and CEO Joe Lubin, ConsenSys will use the funding to further build out MetaMask and Infura, as well as other Ethereum software tools it supports.

“It’s about growing the company organically and bringing the best and brightest into our ecosystem,” Lubin told Decrypt in an interview last week about the new funding. “There’s a lot of people from the world of Web2 technologies and traditional finance who are dying to get in.”

Funding will also support the rapid expansion of MetaMask with a major redesign scheduled for release later in 2022, as well as the rollout of a plug-in extensibility system that will allow integration with a wide variety of blockchain protocols and account security schemes. This roadmap expansion also builds on ConsenSys’s recent acquisition of MyCrypto, enabling MetaMask to bolster its security infrastructure and create a cohesive user experience across desktop, mobile, extension, and browser wallets.

ConsenSys will also accelerate the global adoption of Infura’s development tool suite as well as its efforts to drive NFT adoption for artists, content creators, brands, intellectual property owners, game publishers, and sports leagues.

Led by Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO, the company, which has nearly 700 full-time employees at present, will be hiring this year as it is on track to scale to over 1,000 employees by the end of 2022.

MetaMask has grown dramatically in the last year – recently hitting 30 million monthly active users – and so has Infura, but they are very different products. The former is primarily a wallet used by consumers to navigate Web3 while the latter is a suite of developer tools for building and maintaining crypto applications.