ConsenSys has announced the final close of its $65million formation round to accelerate the convergence of decentralised finance (DeFi) and Web3 applications on Ethereum with enterprise blockchain infrastructure. Global financial services firms J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and UBS invested alongside leading blockchain companies, including Protocol Labs, the Maker Foundation, Fenbushi, The LAO, Alameda Research. Additional investors include CMT Digital, Greater Bay Area Homeland Development Fund, Quotidian Ventures, and Liberty City Ventures. Several funds invested with Ethereum-based stablecoins, DAI and USDC, as consideration.
The past year has been a period of strategic evolution and growth. An Ethereum company restructured to form ConsenSys, the core software business, and ConsenSys Mesh, the investment arm, incubator, and portfolio. ConsenSys also acquired Quorum from J.P. Morgan to deepen its commitment to and competitive position in the enterprise protocol ecosystem. ConsenSys is now an integrated Ethereum software company with best-in-class products powering the blockchain developer and financial user experience: Codefi, Diligence, Infura, MetaMask, Truffle, and Quorum. This product suite supports both public and private permissioned blockchain networks and will be supporting Layer 2 Ethereum networks and facilitating access to adjacent protocols like IPFS, Filecoin, and others. ConsenSys also contributes significantly to Ethereum 2.0.
Joseph Lubin, Founder of ConsenSys, Co-founder, Ethreum, commented, “When we set out to raise a round, it was important to us to patiently construct a diverse cap table, consistent with our belief that similar to how the web developed, the whole economy would join the revolutionaries on a next-generation protocol. ConsenSys’ software stack represents access to a new automated objective trust foundation enabled by decentralized protocols like Ethereum. We are proud to partner with preeminent financial firms alongside leading crypto companies to further converge the centralized and decentralized financial domains at this particularly exciting time of growth for ConsenSys and the entire industry.”
ConsenSys’ products are the primary points of access to Ethereum for developers, enterprises, and consumers, making Web3 more accessible and useful. MetaMask counts over three million monthly active users across mobile and desktop. More than 150,000 developers use Infura’s APIs, and 4.5 million developers create and deploy smart contracts using Truffle. Its Protocols group, which develops Hyperledger Besu and ConsenSys Quorum, are building Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for six central banks.
Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Digital Asset and Blockchain Products and Partnerships at Mastercard said, “Enterprise Ethereum is a key infrastructure on which we and our partners are building payment and non-payment applications to power the future of commerce. We are delivering on our multi-rail strategy focusing on digital currencies including our work supporting central banks as they explore CBDCs. Our investment and partnership with ConsenSys helps us bring secure and performant Enterprise Ethereum capabilities to our customers whom we believe will benefit from a robust, open-source Ethereum community to create relevant and scalable solutions.”
To accelerate mainstream adoption of Web3, ConsenSys is focused on commercialising its industry-leading platforms as distribution channels for leading DeFi protocols, catalysing the convergence of traditional and decentralised finance. As an example, ConsenSys launched a token swap feature in the MetaMask wallet that enables users to access the largest selection of tokens at the most competitive prices, resulting in $1.8billion in volume in decentralised exchange use.
Colleen Sullivan, Co-Founder and CEO of CMT Digital said, “ConsenSys is the pioneer in bridging the gaps across traditional finance, centralized crypto, and DeFi, and more broadly, between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. We are proud to participate in this funding round as the ConsenSys team continues to pave the way for global users — retail and institutional — to easily access the crypto ecosystem.”
