By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 16th, 2024
Blockchain technology firm ConsenSys latest Series D funding round sets the stage for the platform’s projected ‘Series ETH’ initiative.
Blockchain software technology company ConsenSys announced that it concluded a $450-million Series D funding round on Tuesday. Led by ParaFi Capital, the exercise doubles ConsenSys’ total valuation to more than $7 billion since its $200-million Series C round in November.
New investors that participated in the latest round include Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures, and C Ventures. The round also involved former investors from last year’s Series C round. Participants include Third Point, Marshall Wace, TRUE Capital Management, and UTA VC, United Talent Agency’s venture fund.
ConsenSys co-founder and chief executive officer Joseph Lubin discussed the funding. Lubin lauded ConsenSys’ adaptability and scalability as a leading Ethereum and decentralized protocols software company with product suites. As he put it:
“I think of ConsenSys as a broad and deep capabilities machine for the decentralized protocols ecosystem, able to rapidly capitalize at scale on fundamental new constructs that emerge.”
Such emerging “constructs” encompass developer tooling, tokenization, token launches, wallets, security audits, DeFi (1.0, 2.0, and beyond), NFTs, bridges, Layer-2 scaling, and DAOs.
Lubin also added that the next ConsenSys funding round would be dubbed ‘Series ETH’. Firstly, the title is word play on the alphabet succeeding ‘D’. Furthermore, the concept also appears as an ingenious way to encourage participating investors to contribute directly using ETH. According to the CEO:
“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 to Use Proceeds from Funding Round for Several Objectives
In a press release, ConsenSys stated that it would channel some of the funding proceeds towards hiring over 600 new employees worldwide. In addition, the leading Ethereum (ETH) software company also plans to scale up the broader Ethereum ecosystem even further. It intends to achieve this by converting part of the fundraiser proceeds to ETH. This is so as to rebalance the ratio of the crypto United States dollar equivalents in ConsenSys’ treasury. The company also aims to consolidate its “ultrasound money” position prior to the impending ETH proof of stake transition this year.
Furthermore, ConsenSys looks to earn yields on assets in decentralized finance (DeFi), protocols, and through staking. Yet still, some of the newly-generated fresh capital will also support MetaMask’s expansion. This will primarily manifest through a major redesign scheduled for release later in the year. ConsenSys is also working on rolling out a plug-in extensibility system. This plug-in extensibility will facilitate integration with various blockchain protocols and account security schemes.
MetaMask is a software crypto wallet used to buy, sell and swap digital currencies on the Ethereum blockchain. In January, MetaMask surpassed 30M monthly active users accessing Web3 applications, representing a 42% increase in 4 months.