Consensys splits MetaMask from institutional and Ethereum infrastructure businesses

Ethereum-focused Consensys Software Inc. is splitting into two independent companies, separating its consumer-facing MetaMask business from its institutional and infrastructure operations.

Consensys Software will be rebranded as MetaMask, with Joe Lubin serving as chairman and CEO. The new MetaMask will focus on self-custodial consumer finance, expanding beyond its wallet roots into payments, savings and investing. The company said MetaMask has more than 100 million downloads across roughly 190 countries and has facilitated trillions of dollars in cumulative transaction volume.

Meanwhile, CSI's Protocols Group will become a newly formed company under the "Consensys" name focused on Ethereum and institutional blockchain infrastructure, including the Linea network and Besu and Teku clients, under CEO Mike Kriak and President David Cunningham, with Lubin as executive chairman.

The company said the split reflects growing institutional demand for tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure as financial firms move from pilots to production deployments.

"For over a decade, the Consensys teams and products that ultimately became Consensys Software Inc. helped build the foundations of the Ethereum ecosystem — from the protocol itself to the tools and infrastructure that made self-custodial finance and sovereign networks possible," Lubin said in a statement. "MetaMask grew out of that work into the world's most widely used self-custodial wallet, and today it's becoming something larger: a platform where people don't just hold their assets, but manage their money in its many diverse forms and aspects."

The split is expected to be official by the end of this year.

How the split came to be

MetaMask has been aggressively expanding beyond being a wallet. It launched a U.S. Mastercard payment card early this year, with rewards paid in its mUSD stablecoin. In June, MetaMask launched its Money Account, allowing users to earn up to 4% APY on mUSD while using the same balance for spending through MetaMask Card and for trading, perps, and prediction markets.

Meanwhile, Linea and Consensys' infrastructure businesses have increasingly targeted institutional use cases. Linea is being positioned to attract institutional capital, while institutions including Citi, DTC, and BNY Mellon use Consensys' Besu infrastructure.

Lubin told The Block last year that a MetaMask MASK token was coming, tying it to the wallet's decentralization strategy. Amid today's news of the split, the company stayed "mum" on a possible IPO and token, according to Fortune.

"Financial institutions and market infrastructure are moving to always-on operations with tokenization at the core," Cunningham said in the release. "Consensys Software Inc. has built the open-source technology that is the foundation of this transition. We are now delivering the interoperability infrastructure that the world's largest financial marketplaces need to coordinate this transformation with the required privacy, resilience and scale."