Blockchain infrastructure platform ConsenSys today announced it has raised $450 million in a Series D funding round that has more than doubled its valuation to a staggering $7 billion.
The fresh funding round was led by ParaFi Capital with participation from Singapore’s Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures, and C Ventures.
Founded in 2015, ConsenSys is a global blockchain company focused on building and scaling tools and enterprise software products powered by Ethereum.
This latest funding comes just four months after the firm raised $200 million at a $3 billion valuation. At that time, ConsenSys said that its MetaMask wallet saw 21 million monthly active users.
Today, however, the firm reported that Metamask has surpassed 30 million monthly active users, which is a 42% increase from its November fundraise.
ConsenSys noted that the cash injection will be converted to Ethereum (ETH) to “rebalance the ratio of ETH to USD” and it will use the fresh capital to employ over 600 new laborers globally and develop its Ethereum ecosystem.
The company said the “funding will also support the rapid expansion of MetaMask with a major redesign scheduled for release later in 2022, as well as the roll-out of a plug-in extensibility system that will allow integration with a wide variety of blockchain protocols and account security schemes.”
Speaking on the development, Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of ConsenSys said:
“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 as developer tooling, tokenization, token launches, wallets, security audits, DeFi (1.0, 2.0 and beyond), NFTs, bridges, Layer-2 scaling, DAOs, and more.”
Blockchain infrastructure providers have continued to attract venture capitalists as well as gain traction from mainstream developers.
Last year, ConsenSys inked a partnership deal with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to explore the possible use and implications of a wholesale form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) using distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Meanwhile, last month, the firm’s competitor, Alchemy raised $200 million at a $10.2 billion valuation.
