I'm pleased to announce that Consensys and the SEC have agreed in principle that the securities enforcement case concerning MetaMask should be dismissed. Subject to the approval of the Commission, the SEC will file a stipulation with the court that effectively closes the case. We were committed to fighting this suit until the bitter end but welcome this outcome. No company wants to be the target of agency enforcement, but at the same time, it was our duty and honor to stand up for blockchain software developers in the hour it was most needed, as I’m sure our industry peers who also stood up against regulatory overreach would tell you.
Devs both here at Consensys and across the space are building a better world and deserve to have someone in their corner fighting for their rights. That is why we sued the SEC when it became clear that Ethereum was the next target, a lawsuit that actually caused the SEC to drop their Ethereum investigation. Every legal and policy win might be hard fought, but each is an important step along the path to a better financial system and a better internet.
I am grateful to @MattCorva and our legal team for their exceptional work and the entire Consensys family, whose passion and commitment has never once waivered. We appreciate the SEC’s new leadership and the pro-innovation, pro-investor path they are taking. We will remain deeply engaged with public and private policymakers going forward. Crypto wants the U.S. to address the best interests of consumers and businesses alike, and we are already on our way to making that happen.
Now we can get 100% back to building. 2025 is going to be the best year yet for Ethereum and Consensys. The paradigm shift to a much more decentralized world is accelerating.
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We’re on the verge of a paradigm shift that will be heard around the world.
Consensys is on a mission to catalyze a Network State within the emerging decentralized Web3 and AI global economy.
During my talk earlier at DevCon, I shared how we’re moving towards rigorous decentralization and empowering sovereign individuals:
1/13
For years, companies in our industry have been living in fear, unable to engage in activities that should be natural for a Web3 company. We’ve been operating in a climate of regulatory uncertainty, with gaslighting and carpet bombing from the SEC stifling our progress.
2/13
There’s been concern about a second American Revolution. There is indeed going to be another Revolution. It will be a bloodless and probably bi-partisan revolution that sheds the regulatory cruft and reformats America according to the principles under which she was founded:
Liberty and Justice for All, distrust for overreaching centralized authority and a healthy reverence for self-determination and decentralization
Today we need to make the extremely difficult decision to streamline some of ConsenSys’ teams to adjust to challenging and uncertain market conditions.
While I’ve often said that the fear and greed cycles are shortening in duration, our current bear market also coincides with a very challenging macroeconomic environment driven by surging inflation, lagging economic activity, and increased geopolitical unrest.
2/10
And against that backdrop, some of the poorly behaved CeFi actors in our space have brought a reckoning on themselves and exacerbated the distrust and pullback, casting a broad pall on our ecosystem that we will all need to work through.
I’m seeing a lot of misunderstandings around our updated privacy policy that need to be clarified.
1/21
MetaMask wallet is a software product developed by ConsenSys. ConsenSys does not operate MetaMask.
*You*, the user, operate MetaMask on your device.
2/21
MetaMask does not collect IP addresses. @MetaMask routes information necessary for your transaction to be processed by an RPC provider. @infura_io is the default RPC provider in MetaMask, which we also develop.
It always was and always will be about decentralization. Beware of centralizing wolves in sheep's clothing.
🧵1/15
People need to trust one another in order to do basic things together. But trust breaks down when there is misunderstanding, information asymmetry, or an imbalance of power.
2/15
With peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and eventually #Ethereum, we discovered that decentralized protocols & maximally decentralized replicated state machines were the key to building a new trust foundation for the planet.
The launch of the #Eth2 Beacon Chain is characteristic of the emergent, open-source ethos that attracts so many to Ethereum in the first place. More than 27,000 validators from around the globe are now participating in the new #Eth2 consensus model.
Proof of Stake is a monumental upgrade of the crypto-economic incentives that already make Ethereum an automated, objective foundation for trust. We are collectively deepening the commitment to building a maximally decentralized network.
The global economy needs an objectively trustworthy frame of reference to coordinate logic and transactions between business networks. Ethereum is the leading candidate, already functioning as the global settlement layer for ~$1 trillion in digital assets on the decentralized web
I am calling the cryptobottom of 2018. This bottom is marked by an epic amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt from our friends in the 4th and crypto-5th estates.
What I've witnessed among the chattering class the past few weeks in response to @ConsenSys 2.0 is a rather typical tune: the alarmed, the eulogistic, and the gleeful.
We have been on the receiving end of an epic amount of conjecture and preemptive paranoia --- filled with damning rhetoric about situations journalists and bloggers don't have real data for, actual insight into, or understanding of.