Today, ConsenSys announced the final close of its $65M formation round to accelerate the convergence of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 applications on Ethereum with enterprise blockchain infrastructure. Global financial services firms J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and UBS invested alongside leading blockchain companies.
ConsenSys is now an integrated Ethereum software company with best-in-class products powering the blockchain developer and financial user experience: Codefi, Diligence, Infura, MetaMask, Truffle, and Quorum. This product suite supports both public and private permissioned blockchain networks and will be supporting Layer 2 Ethereum networks and facilitating access to adjacent protocols like IPFS, Filecoin, and others. ConsenSys also contributes significantly to Ethereum 2.0.
ConsenSys’ products are the primary points to access Ethereum for developers, enterprises, and consumers, making Web3 more accessible and useful. MetaMask counts over 3 million monthly active users across mobile and desktop. More than 150,000 developers use Infura’s APIs, and millions of developers create and deploy smart contracts using Truffle.
Its Protocols group which develops Hyperledger Besu and ConsenSys Quorum, along with ConsenSys Codefi, its commerce and finance application suite, are building Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) for six central banks.
To accelerate mainstream adoption of Web3, ConsenSys is focused on commercializing its industry leading platforms as distribution channels for leading DeFi protocols, catalyzing the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance. As an example, ConsenSys launched a token swap feature in the MetaMask wallet that enables users to access the largest selection of tokens at the most competitive prices, resulting in $2 billion in volume in decentralized exchange use.
Raj Dhamodharan, Executive Vice President of Digital Asset and Blockchain Products and Partnerships at Mastercard said, “Enterprise Ethereum is a key infrastructure on which we and our partners are building payment and non-payment applications to power the future of commerce. We are delivering on our multi-rail strategy focusing on digital currencies including our work supporting central banks as they explore CBDCs. Our investment and partnership with ConsenSys helps us bring secure and performant Enterprise Ethereum capabilities to our customers whom we believe will benefit from a robust, open source Ethereum community to create relevant and scalable solutions.”
Mastercard and ConsenSys partnership to power the future of multi-blockchain commerce
ConsenSys Quorum is an open-source protocol layer that enables enterprises to leverage Ethereum for their private or public production blockchain applications. Quorum includes customizable features required for enterprises to operate a secure, scalable permissioned network. As part of Mastercard’s multi-blockchain strategy, it will work with ConsenSys on a variety of initiatives.
„Mastercard’s blockchain patents and payment network combined with ConsenSys’ deep blockchain development expertise will deliver a robust tech stack based on ConsenSys Quorum, an open-source protocol for enterprises built on Ethereum,” according to the press release.
Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of ConsenSys and co-founder of Ethereum, said, “ConsenSys’ products are the primary points of access to Ethereum for developers, enterprises and consumers. Digital scarcity, transparency and automated financial settlement using the interoperable digital asset standards of Ethereum are helping accelerate financial innovation in a variety of industries, which range from NFTs to Central Bank Digital Currencies.”
Enterprise Ethereum has seen continued adoption among financial institutions and businesses, making it one of the most widely used permissioned blockchains.
„While Mastercard does not currently have plans to support Ether, the native crypto asset of the public Ethereum blockchain, on its network, this investment is part of Mastercard’s range of initiatives and investments in the space,” Mastercard says.
“The accelerated shift of financial services to blockchain is continuing to reshape how businesses, governments and people transact around the world in real time,” said Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of Digital Asset and Blockchain Products & Partnerships at Mastercard. “Our investment in ConsenSys will enable us to fast-track our blockchain innovation and support a growing number of customers that are actively developing applications on Enterprise Ethereum and leveraging open-source technologies and communities.”
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
