The popular Ethereum wallet “MetaMask” is officially launching its own token, as confirmed by Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin. The team will also reportedly launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for funding the wallet’s growth.
- MetaMask competes with other self-custodial wallets like MyEtherWallet and Coinbase Wallet for interacting with web 3. Individuals and institutions can use the wallet to use Ethereum and other smart contract chains for minting NFTs, accessing DeFi, and other things.
- Though DAOs are typically conceived as an alternative governance model (in contrast to more hierarchical corporations), MetaMask’s DAO will not dictate the project’s growth. Rather, it will simply serve as a funding mechanism, like various donation-focused DAOs have done before. Not many details were provided about the DAO aside from that.
- MetaMask’s token – which has been faked in the past – has also had little revealed about it. Some hope that it will unfold like the Uniswap token, which was airdropped on early users of the project.
- However, MetaMask’s head of operations confirmed last month that it will not be designed as a “cash grab”.
- MetaMask has seen tremendous growth as of late, recently surpassing over 30 million monthly active users. That’s up over 40% since November when the company behind it – ConsenSys – was only half its current valuation.
- The wallet was recently caught up in some controversy after briefly censoring Venezuelan transactions, due to the node it routs to –Infura – being required to limit transactions from certain regions. The issue has since been fixed.
