ConsenSys

A $450M Series D at a $7B valuation in 2022 coincided with MetaMask surpassing 30M monthly active users, before privacy disclosures shifted coverage toward user-data practices.

Who they are

ConsenSys appears in coverage as a developer and investor in Ethereum-based projects, with MetaMask and the Infura RPC service central to its role in providing infrastructure and wallet access for the Ethereum ecosystem. Its stories also span enterprise blockchain through the acquisition of J.P. Morgan’s Quorum project, DeFi infrastructure, smart-contract auditing, and investments in adjacent ventures.

The recent arc

Coverage accelerated around financing and platform scale: ConsenSys raised $200M at a $3.2B valuation in late 2021 from investors including HSBC and Coinbase Ventures, then announced a $450M ParaFi Capital-led Series D at a $7B valuation in March 2022. That announcement paired the funding story with MetaMask’s reported 30M-plus monthly active users, making the wallet the clearest public marker of ConsenSys’s reach.

The tension

The dominant tension is between MetaMask’s position as a widely used gateway to Ethereum and the data practices attached to that gateway. November 2022 coverage focused on ConsenSys’s disclosure that MetaMask users’ IP and Ethereum wallet addresses could be collected through Infura when it serves as an RPC; after user criticism, the company said in December that it would stop directly logging IP addresses alongside transaction data and rebuild MetaMask’s settings page. Separate allegations by 35 former employees over an asset transfer added governance scrutiny during the same year.

Why it matters

ConsenSys sits at a consequential layer of Ethereum’s user and developer stack: wallet access, RPC connectivity, application infrastructure, and security services. If MetaMask’s scale continues to make it a primary route into on-chain services, the company’s privacy choices and ability to offer meaningful user controls could shape trust in infrastructure that is often described as decentralized, while its financing and audit demand indicate the commercial stakes around that infrastructure remain substantial.

Related: Ethereum · MetaMask · RPC · ConsenSys, which develops and invests in Ethereum projects, announces · ConsenSys says it collects user data related to its on-chain wallet se