Lubin Will Run MetaMask as Consensys Moves Its Protocol Work Into a New Company

Consensys Software Inc. said on Wednesday it will separate into two independently operated companies, splitting the consumer wallet business that most people know from the protocol and institutional work that sits underneath it.

The existing company continues, renamed MetaMask, with Joe Lubin as chairman and chief executive. Its Protocols Group and institutional infrastructure business move into a newly formed company that takes the Consensys name, run by Mike Kriak as CEO and David Cunningham as president, with Lubin as executive chairman. The company expects to complete the separation by the end of 2026.

The existing company carries on under the wallet’s name, while the name people recognize goes to what the announcement calls “a newly formed corporate entity” drawn from the protocol and institutional side of the business.

MetaMask keeps the wallet and the consumer products, including Money Account, which the company describes as combining “automated earning, instant spending, and one-click trading in a single balance.” It reports more than 100 million downloads across roughly 190 countries and “trillions of dollars in cumulative transaction volume.”

Lubin, who said the company’s teams helped build the foundations of the Ethereum ecosystem, cast the change as a widening of scope. “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,” he said in the announcement.

Consensys takes the Ethereum and Linea protocol work, the Besu execution client that underpins many financial institutions’ permissioned networks, and Teku, aiming them at banks and asset managers moving into tokenization. The company pointed to a June Citi report that put tokenized assets at $5.5 trillion by 2030 in its base case and $8.2 trillion in its most bullish one.

“Financial institutions and market infrastructure are moving to always-on operations with tokenization at the core,” Cunningham said in the announcement.

The announcement does not mention an initial public offering, and does not say which company would pursue one. Consensys delayed a planned US listing to this fall, after aiming to file a confidential registration statement around the end of February with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs engaged to lead it. Asked both why the company was splitting and about the timing of an IPO, a spokesperson told Fortune it does not comment on “market speculation or potential future capital markets activity.”

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