According to Decrypt, MetaMask's parent company, which has 30 million monthly active users, said after closing a huge funding round that it will soon launch a decentralized autonomous organization or DAO, "which will not manage MetaMask, but it will fund the creation of new MetaMask." CEO Lubin did not provide more details about the DAO or a release date, but did confirm that MetaMask intends to release Token, which the head of MetaMask operations said last month at Ether Denver would be done discreetly.
The DAO launch is also partly a prelude to MetaMask's Token launch, which, with its company and major users based in the U.S., and its huge user base, is bound to be subject to extremely strict regulatory scrutiny, and even temporary suspensions like Libra's can't be ruled out. Therefore, its first step is to avoid the accusation of securities tokens and switch to a model of governance Token similar to DAO. Once the Token is released, the airdrop for 30 million or more users could be the largest ever.
MetaMask is very sensitive to US regulation. José Rafael Peña, previously noted as a former CoinDesk employee, said that the Venezuelan IP was banned from Metamask using Infura because it was "not available in some specific areas to comply with the law", but could continue to be used after changing nodes. According to Decrypt, the MetaMask blocking turned out to be an "oops", as Infura was blocking access to all IP addresses in Crimea and Ukraine in order to comply with the new US sanctions program, but a configuration error led to the blocking of Venezuela (now lifted). Other areas currently blocked include Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria. This also demonstrates MetaMask's proactive approach in cooperating with U.S. regulation, as other similar node providers have not explicitly blocked IP access to the Udon region.
In addition, parent company ConsenSys was previously sued by 35 former employees and filed a special audit alleging that the company moved to a new entity in 2020 in exchange for a 10% investment in traditional financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and offsetting a $39 million loan, a move that harmed minority shareholders.
On March 15 ConsenSys, the parent company of Metamask Infura and others, announced the closing of a $450 million financing round valued at more than $7 billion, with the accepted funds to be immediately converted to ETH. ParaFi Capital led the round, with Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures and C Ventures following. Metamask currently has 30 million monthly active users. ConsenSys has been an important backing force behind Ether, and the explosion of MetaMask is also due to the development of Ether and EVM. This is also the reason why it said in a rare moment that it "accepts digital assets and fiat currencies in this round and immediately converts them to ETH".
Officials also revealed data on MetaMask Little Fox, currently the number one app in the crypto world: the wallet now supports over 30 million monthly active users (MAUs), a 42% increase in just four months. The global user base relies on MetaMask to cast and collect NFTs, join DAOs, and participate in the DeFi protocol. The US, Philippines, Brazil, Germany and Nigeria are some of MetaMask's most active markets. However, the TP Wallet market is relatively competitive in the Chinese-speaking lower regions; Phantom, with over 1.2 million users on Solana, holds the absolute lead; and Coinbase Wallet continues to make inroads.
Officials emphasize that funding will also support the rapid expansion of MetaMask, with a redesign scheduled for release later in 2022, as well as the launch of a plug-in scalable system that will allow integration with various blockchain protocols and account security solutions. This means that MetaMask may later integrate with other non-EVM public chains such as Solana Polka.
MetaMask is also starting to make some profit with its built-in aggregated transactions, and Decrypt reports that it is generating around $85,000 to $220,000 in daily revenue on its ethereum chain. It has also been previously reported to have revenues of around $200 million in 2021. It is worth noting that this revenue is still very low compared to exchanges, miners, etc. This also suggests that the most profitable and successful business models in the industry are still centralized exchanges (contracts) and bitcoin miners. While MetaMask does not have the pressure of capital costs after the huge funding round, it seems that the Token economics is a choice that has to be made, otherwise it will be difficult to go further with the lack of commercial real estate models.