Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_6230c5dec273b" class="highlights">
 
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<div id="highlights-block_6230c60fc273c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>MetaMask eclipsed 30 million monthly active users in January</li>
 <li>Proceeds from the round, led by ParaFi Capital, will be converted to ether</li>
 </ul>
 
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ConsenSys has raised $450 million — valuing the company at $7 billion — as it now looks to onboard more talent and continue accelerating Web3 adoption.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The blockchain infrastructure company’s Series D funding round follows a raise of $200 million in November, which valued ConsenSys at $3.2 billion.



Its main product, Metamask, eclipsed 30 million monthly active users in January — a 42% increase in fourth months.



A major redesign of MetaMask is slated for later this year, according to the company. ConsenSys also plans to roll out a plug-in extensibility system to allow integration with various blockchain protocols and account security schemes.



Johnna Powell, global co-head of ConsenSys NFTs, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/onboarding-the-next-wave-of-metamask-users-through-nfts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told Blockworks last month</a> that the company is seeking to bring the next tens of millions of users into Metamask through NFTs (non-fungible tokens). It is also exploring collateralization, fractionalization, swapping, borrowing and lending in the segment.



ParaFi Capital led the latest fundraising effort. Participants of the Series C round that invested in ConsenSys again were Third Point, Marshall Wace, TRUE Capital Management and United Talent Agency’s venture fund. New investors included Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures.



“As a long-time power user of ConsenSys’ products and services, ParaFi is thrilled to be an investor and thought partner as the company continues to operate at the forefront of decentralized infrastructure,” ParaFi Capital founder Ben Forman said in a statement.



The proceeds from the round will be converted to ether to rebalance the ratio of ETH to US dollar-equivalents in line with ConsenSys’ treasury strategy, according to the company.



“Next round will be our ‘Series ETH’ where we will assist investors in getting fully crypto native to contribute ETH as a symbol of and commitment to the ongoing paradigm shift,” ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin said in a statement.



The funding will also go toward hiring more than 600 new employees, the company announced. With nearly 700 full-time employees, <a href="https://consensys.net" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ConsenSys</a> plans to have more than 1,000 by the end of 2022.



A ConsenSys spokesperson noted in February that nearly half of ConsenSys’s 366 hires over the past six months were coming from the Web2 ecosystem, while about one-third joined the company from a different industry.



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ConsenSys Plans To ‘Redesign’ MetaMask and Hire 600 New Employees

<div id="highlights-block_62193a50cbbf3" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>ConsenSys is building out its white-label NFT platform and is in talks with luxury and sports brands</li>
 <li>The company’s executive director of strategic initiatives details a potential future of “non-fungible everything”</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



ConsenSys is seeking to use NFTs as a way to onboard the next wave of users into its <a href="https://metamask.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">main product</a>, Metamask, as the company expects the segment to greatly broaden over time.



“We’ve aligned around a North Star to bring the next tens of millions of users into Metamask through NFTs,” Johnna Powell, global co-head of ConsenSys NFTs, told Blockworks.



Developed by ConsenSys, MetaMask is a mobile app and browser extension that functions as a cryptocurrency wallet for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. The offering reported roughly 21 million monthly active users in November.



NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have quickly dwarfed the former focus on decentralized finance (DeFi), according to Tyler Mulvihill, ConsenSys’ co-head of global NFTs. NFT sales hit nearly $20 billion in 2021, compared to less than $100 million the year prior, according to Cryptoslam.



“They are fun, culturally relevant and a perfect playground to educate people about the promises of Web3,” Mulvihill said in an email.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“We plan on accelerating this journey using NFTs as a way to bring people into Web3 through purchasing and custody on MetaMask.”</blockquote>



In addition to looking to add Metamask users through NFTs, Powell noted the company’s focus on its white-label NFT platform.&nbsp;



ConsenSys <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-acquires-treums-team-nft-platform/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acquired blockchain company Treum</a> and its NFT platform in October to advance its NFT technology offering for creators, brands, rights owners, game publishers, sports teams and leagues.



The company is currently in talks with one large brand owner in the luxury market and several in the sports realm, Powell explained.



“People are finally seeing that there are ways that you can own something digitally, and it’s provable, and it’s authentic and it’s immutable — and that didn’t exist before,” Powell explained.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The future of NFTs</h3>



Powell highlighted the potential of NFTs beyond collectibles, noting that a person’s resume, medical records or driver’s license could be NFTs.&nbsp;



“We’re looking at this very narrow, niche area, but we see a broad world opening up that could be essentially non-fungible everything,” she said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“It’s just a far more efficient way to track records, to track anything you need to track provenance for.”</blockquote>



ConsenSys is also taking an interest in the financialization of NFTs and is exploring collateralization, fractionalization, swapping, borrowing and lending in the segment.



“Traditionally illiquid and infrequently traded assets like NFTs were hard to price,” Mulvihill noted. “By solving this problem, it allows people to borrow against their NFTs by collateralizing them.”



NFT platform Arcade matches blockchain art owners with prospective lenders, accepting collateral ranging from plots of virtual land to blue-chip collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.



Such a pricing fix would also enable people to swap NFTs more easily, Mulvihill added.



Some investors wanting access to popular NFT collections cannot afford the price such non-fungible tokens are commanding.&nbsp;



CryptoPunk #5822 sold for about 8,000 ETH, worth about $23.7 million, on Feb. 12, according to Larva Labs.



With the mainstream becoming priced out of popular NFT collections, Consensus believes it will see increased demand for fractionalized NFTs and participate in the upside by owning a piece of one.



“We think all of that is on the horizon,” Powell said. “None of it is really truly here yet, but we see it coming in the next one or two years.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Onboarding the Next Wave of Metamask Users Through NFTs

<div id="highlights-block_6165cd2143305" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Treum is the company behind EulerBeats an Ethereum-based NFT music and art project that features algorithmically-generated art and audio tracks</li>
 <li>ConsenSys believes art, sports and loyalty programs in particular could be “very meaningful opportunities” in the NFT space</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



ConsenSys has acquired Treum’s team and NFT platform from Web3 incubator Mesh in a move that will allow the Ethereum software company to advance its NFT technology offering for creators, brands, rights owners, game publishers, sports teams and leagues.



The purchase of <a href="https://www.treum.io" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Treum</a> — a blockchain and supply chain company — follows the creation of the <a href="https://palm.io" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Palm NFT Studio</a>, an ecosystem that ConsenSys launched with HENI Group and Heyday Films in March.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Johnna Powell, executive director of ConsenSys’s strategic initiatives, said during a webinar on Tuesday that NFTs go beyond redefining collectibles to a broader vision of rebuilding the world in a digital format.



“Investors are bullish, brands, artists and celebrities continue creating, sales continue to increase and even where we see that there have been cycles of NFT popularity and less popularity, there are so many indicators in the market that point to continued growth,” she said. “We feel very strongly that we’re just at the beginning.”



Powell said in a statement that ConsenSys is focused on making Web 3 easy to use, access, and build on, noting that it was “an obvious decision” to accelerate the development of its NFT platform for end-users and builders.&nbsp;



She wrote to Blockworks in a message during the webinar that the company believes art, sports and brand or loyalty programs, in particular, could be “very meaningful opportunities” in the NFT space.



Treum will be able to leverage ConsenSys’s massive pipeline of customers and products, Treum co-founder Tyler Mulvihill wrote to Blockworks during the webinar’s Q&amp;A session. Among those products is MetaMask, which passed <a href="https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-10-million-maus-making-it-the-worlds-leading-non-custodial-crypto-wallet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">10 million monthly active users</a> in August. The offering is a mobile app and browser extension that functions as a cryptocurrency wallet for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain.



“We bring that expertise, capability, team and platform ready to go under the ConsenSys umbrella,” Mulvihill said. “With the ConsenSys scale, we think our exponential journey is really just starting.”



Treum earlier this year introduced <a href="https://eulerbeats.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EulerBeats</a>, an Ethereum-based NFT music and art project that features algorithmically generated art and audio tracks. Its second collection of tracks sold for $3 million in March following the successful launch of “Genesis” earlier this year, and the platform has distributed millions in royalties and staking rewards to its user base. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="931" height="470" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-9268" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=931 931w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-12-eulerbeat.jpg?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 931px) 100vw, 931px" /><figcaption>Eulerbeats: Genesis LP 1; Source: <a href="https://eulerbeats.com/genesis/21575894274" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eulerbeats</a></figcaption></figure>



The legality of NFT-based royalty distribution is an open question. Crypto exchange FTX <a href="https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/4410399400215-Solana-NFT-FAQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recently said</a> it would not list collections that distribute the royalties from sales to NFT holders, as it looks to ensure compliance of US securities laws.



Mulvihill noted in a statement that Treum will continue to serve its major intellectual property customers, deepen its development of the metaverse, launch bleeding-edge NFT drops, and onboard the next 100 million users to the Web3 community.



The acquisition comes after ConsenSys is <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-valued-at-3b-next-fundraise-may-make-it-so/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly raising money</a> in a funding round that would value the company at $3 billion. It had closed a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-raises-65-million-to-bring-defi-to-traditional-finance/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$65 million “formation round”</a> in April to accelerate the convergence of DeFi and Web3 applications on Ethereum with enterprise blockchain infrastructure.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">An evolving space</h3>



NFT sales volumes hit $10.7 billion in the third quarter, according to data from market tracker DappRadar, which was up from $1.3 billion in the prior quarter. Sales volumes on NFT marketplace OpenSea <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/opensea-hits-3b-in-monthly-nft-volume/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reached more than $3 billion in August</a> alone.



Jack O’Holleran, co-founder and CEO of SKALE Labs, said during the webinar that he has witnessed NFTs move from collectibles to what he called “engagement continuums” for users and communities.



“I think there’s a definite trend of thinking of NFTs now as a means for access and experience,” he explained. “Eighty percent of the value actually comes from the engagement and community growth, while 20% is revenue-oriented.”



In terms of offering NFT buyers access and experience, the “Gold Edition” of Major League Baseball’s latest stadium series, for example, included a ceremonial first pitch, two tickets, a stadium tour and a meet-and-greet.



Mulvihill said he believes that NFTs will be used in the future to get into concerts or reserve a table at a new restaurant. That utility, he added, is going to drive transactions and ultimately the success of NFTs.&nbsp;



O’Holleran added that while it can be easy for some to dismiss <a href="https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bored Ape Yacht Club</a> or <a href="https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CryptoPunks</a> NFTs as speculative art, they also represent communities of people. Collab.Land, a tokenized community-management system, can authenticate that you own a specific NFT and get you access to certain groups.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“I really do think community is everything,” Powell said. “It’s all about utility and community, and it’s just been set to fire. It’s like NFTs are rocket fuel for it.”