Messari Daily Brief Feb. 10, 2021 - ConsenSys is Back!

Mason had a good tweet this morning: "Can we all agree, finally, that Consensys has a great business model?” He was referring to the staggering growth at Metamask, one of ConsenSys’ core bits of infrastructure. But the sentiment also happens to echo something I wrote last year about the New York-based, ETH-heavy infrastructure startup that sent me paychecks for a few months in late 2017 as an entrepreneur-in-residence.In the 2020 crypto theses, I wrote:

"There are few companies you could argue are existentially important to Ethereum, but Joe Lubin’s “venture production studio” is one of them. They had a brutal end to 2018 with hundreds of layoffs and project spinouts as the price of ETH plummeted. But I said last year that “rumors of ConsenSys’s death have been greatly exaggerated,” and that seems to be directionally correct, even though ETH is flat on the year. The company’s infrastructure companies are all well-funded, even as the side bets and fat have been cut. No one has ever increased their risk by focusing, and ConsenSys is no different. A cursory look at their home page highlights the new logical orientation of the business. I expect a big 2020 from them, and wouldn’t be surprised to see a nine figure investment from a strategic partner like Microsoft."

In the end, it wasn’t Microsoft, but JPMorgan that made a strategic investment in the business. Regardless, it’s clear the business has rightsized and streamlined focus. Metamask has 4 million users and mid-eight figures of run-rate revenue. The Quorum-Hyperledger enterprise team is bridging the gap with “blockchain not crypto” institutions. Infura still powers a good chunk of the Ethereum and IPFS networks. And CodeFi, ConsenSys diligence, and the firm's other technical consulting services are even better (and, again, much more focused) than they were four years ago.

That’s not to mention that Uncle Joe’s ETH coffers have swollen 20x since December 2019, putting the company on (perhaps permanently) solid footing. Everyone likes a comeback story. Still, ConsenSys’ resurgence has been quiet: overshadowed by the DeFi applications it's powering.

Headlines that matter:

• INTEL: SNX, AVAX, OGN, DOT, GRT, SUSHI, CREAM, RUNE (+15 updates)
• Celo raises $20 million from a16z, Electric Capital (CoinDesk)
• Speaking of ConsenSys, they launched an update of AirSwap (CoinTelegraph)
• Spartan Group launches $50 million DeFi venture fund (The Block)
• Overview of Synthetic Assets on Mirror Protocol (The Block)
• Jim Cramer says all corporate treasurers should be thinking bitcoin (CoinDesk)
• Polygon (fka Matic) releases layer 2 software development kit for ETH (CoinDesk)
• The nine largest public company crypto portfolios (Decrypt)
• What people get wrong about bitcoin’s carbon footprint (Bloomberg)
• Daily Shade: Jeremy Allaire as Mini Me is something amazing I can’t unsee