ConsenSys, a specialist in solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem, has closed a $ 200 million funding round. Investors including HSBC, Marshall Wace, and Coinbase Ventures have valued it at $ 3.2 billion.
The company will use the funds raised to develop the Infura infrastructure platform and the MetaMask non-custodial wallet, as well as to expand its staff.
Infura is used by more than 350,000 developers - their number has increased by 250% over the year. The solution is popular in the DeFi sector - the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX) and the MakerDAO protocol are built on the platform. It is also used by creators of NFT projects like Art Blocks and Sorare.
The number of active users of MetaMask, which is also based on Infura, has grown 36 times over the past year and exceeded 21 million. In October 2020, ConsenSys added a DEX aggregator function to the wallet, which made it possible to exchange tokens directly in the application.
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In December of the same year, the company released an institutional version of the product.
“The pace of adoption is so fast that some of our core KPIs have more than doubled since the summer deal was signed,” said CEO Joseph Lubin.
MetaMask charges 0.875% on every trade made through its plugin. This is significantly higher than the fees of other decentralized platforms like SushiSwap and Curve. According to Dune Analytics, the wallet generated over $ 208 million in revenue for the company in 2021.