Software company ConsenSys closes a $450-million financing round, bringing its valuation to $7 billion. ParaFi Capital led this raise after participating in ConsenSys’ Series C round in November 2021.

Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures, and C Ventures join ParaFi Capital as new investors. Series C investors (Third Point, Marshall Wace, True Capital Management, and UTA VC, United Talent Agency’s venture fund) also participated in this round.

ConsenSys has been creating the foundational software for the next wave of the internet, Web3.

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“Our mission is to unlock the collaborative power of communities by making DAOs, NFTs, and, DeFi universally easy to use, access, and build on,” ConsenSys said in a statement.

Self-custodial wallet MetaMask, which now supports more than 30 million monthly active users (MAUs), grew by 42% in four months. A global user base relies on MetaMask to mint and collect NFTs, join DAOs, and participate in DeFi protocols. The United States, the Philippines, Brazil, Germany, and Nigeria represent some of MetaMask’s most active markets.

All proceeds from the round will be converted to ETH to build ConsenSys’ “ultra sound money” position as a rebalance to its ETH to fiat ratio in line with ConsenSys’ treasury strategy. ConsenSys has long maintained a significant treasury of ETH, stablecoins, and other crypto tokens, and is actively using its own financial infrastructures, such as MetaMask Institutional and Codefi Staking, to put these assets to work in DeFi protocols and via staking in anticipation of Ethereum’s upcoming merge to Proof of Stake.

“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, wallets, security audits, DeFi, NFTs, Layer-2 scaling, DAOs, and more,” said Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of ConsenSys. “This view has resonated with our crypto native and growth investors in a Series D that will enable us to execute exciting growth strategies. This round takes in digital assets as well as fiat and converts all immediately to ETH. The next round will be our ‘Series ETH’ where we will assist investors in getting fully crypto native and contributing ETH as a symbol of and commitment to the ongoing paradigm shift.”

Funding will also support the expansion of MetaMask with a major redesign scheduled for release later in 2022, as well as the rollout of a plug-in extensibility system that will allow integration with a wide variety of blockchain protocols and account security schemes. This roadmap expansion also builds on ConsenSys’s recent acquisition of MyCrypto, which will enable MetaMask to bolster its industry-leading security infrastructure and create a cohesive user experience across desktop, mobile, extension, and browser wallets.

Funding will be used to accelerate the global adoption of Infura’s development tool suite as well as ConsenSys’s efforts to drive NFT adoption for artists, content creators, brands, intellectual property owners, game publishers, and sports leagues.