Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.
Consensys has quietly been positioning itself for public markets all year, trimming costs, tightening operations, and expanding MetaMask beyond a simple Ethereum wallet into a full financial platform.
Consensys was last valued at $7B in 2022 and has since built the most widely used self-custody wallet in crypto.
MetaMask alone reportedly has 30-35 million monthly active users at cycle peaks, which means Consensys is about to position itself as crypto’s consumer super app to investors.
Notably, this announcement comes one day after MetaMask announced its new rewards program (a major step toward its MASK token launch).
Yesterday MetaMask launched “MetaMask Rewards”, a cashback-style program that lets users earn yield and incentives by routing swaps, bridging, and staking through approved partners in-app.
The timing was quite interesting with back-to-back announcements.
But likely because the two (IPO and ICO) go hand-in-hand.
Reward programs drive volume and revenue, which makes those numbers look better to Wall Street.
But now Consensys will soon have to answer the question hanging over every major crypto company: How do you balance a public company with a community-owned token?
Going public means:
Can Consensys walk the tightrope between equity value for Wall Street and token value for users?
It’s certainly not an easy problem to solve.
Consensys’ stock will be driven by revenue and profits. So what will drive the token?
If MetaMask does buybacks of its token using revenue (like recent darlings Hyperliquid and Pump.fun) – then is that taking revenue away from stockholders?
If they don’t use revenue, then what is the MASK token exactly? A governance token?
We know how those have fared over the past 3-4 years (not well).
They’re facing an uphill battle, to say the least. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s Joe Lubin and team.
And if they do, they’ll set the blueprint for every other major company in crypto looking to IPO alongside a token drop…
Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt.
Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
