Stephanie Douse 
ConsenSys, a leading Ethereum and decentralized protocols software business have announced the closing of a $450 million Series D fundraising round headed by ParaFi Capital on Tuesday.
Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, Anthos Capital, Sound Ventures, and C Ventures were among the notable new investors. Since the firm’s $200 million Series C financing in November 2021, its valuation has more than doubled.
Purpose of the funding
The proceeds of the round will be converted to Ether (ETH) in part to rebalance ConsenSys’ treasury’s ETH to US dollar equivalents ratio.
The company is actively pursuing yields on such assets using decentralized finance (DeFi), protocols, and staking, using its own financial infrastructure.
The funds will also be used to expand MetaMask, with a major relaunch planned for later in 2022, as well as the introduction of a plug-in extensibility framework that will allow integration with a wide range of blockchain protocols and account security schemes.
MetaMask topped 30 million monthly active users in January, signifying a 42 percent increase in just four months. Users can use the wallet to create and collect nonfungible tokens, as well as to join decentralized autonomous organizations and engage in DeFi protocols.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum development platform Infura is used by over 430,000 developers. Its Ethereum API now enables annually on-chain ETH transaction volume of more over $1 trillion.
ConsenSys’ founder and CEO, Joseph Lubin, had the following to say about the development:
“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. […] This view has resonated with our crypto native and growth investors in a Series D that will enable us to execute powerful growth strategies.”