The broader macroeconomic conditions over the past year, coupled with ongoing regulatory uncertainty, have created challenges for our industry. Rising interest rates, inflationary pressures, and tightening liquidity led to a more cautious macroeconomic environment. The lack of clear regulatory frameworks in some markets has made navigating our evolving space unnecessarily complex for innovators, builders, investors, and businesses. Multiple cases with the SEC, including ours, represent meaningful jobs and productive investment lost due to the SEC's abuse of power and Congress's inability to rectify the problem. Such attacks from the US government will end up costing many companies that have been investigated, sued, or sent Wells Notices, many millions of dollars.
This is all unfolding within a web3 ecosystem that is evolving rapidly. Our sector is about to go mainstream with web3-native companies making great strides and more traditional companies leaning into web3. Looking ahead, I see a next generation economy not dominated by large monolithic companies; instead, smaller, agile, AI-supercharged companies with web3-based coordination tools will operate more efficiently. To stay competitive in this fast-growing space, we need to reshape ourselves and be more agile, more effective, and even higher-performing.
Today, we are making the tough but prudent decision to streamline our operations to position Consensys for ongoing rapid innovation, long-term sustainability under possibly volatile scenarios, and continued leadership in the web3 space.
This decision impacts 20% of Consensys’ total workforce. We are deeply grateful for their contributions in getting Consensys to where it is today. We are committed to providing all affected employees with substantial support as they move on to their next chapter. This will include:
Severance: Generous severance packages based on tenure.
Extension of exercise window: We are extending the stock option exercise window from 12 to 36 months, recognizing the value these team members have contributed.
Outplacement services: Departing employees will receive career support, including 1-on-1 coaching, networking opportunities, and interview guidance.
Extended healthcare benefits: We will provide continued healthcare benefits in relevant jurisdictions.
Maintaining Financial Sustainability While Business is Strong
Despite the current macroeconomic challenges, our core business remains strong and resilient. Over the past few months, we have focused our efforts on refining and focusing our company strategy and business objectives. To ensure our long-term sustainability and align our efforts more closely with our strategy, we made the hard decision to right-size the company and navigate this landscape with resilience and adaptability. By focusing on our core revenue drivers and staying aligned with our long-term strategy, we are setting Consensys up for enduring success.
Continuing Our Commitment to Decentralization
Since inception, Consensys has always been focused on supporting the vision and mission of the Ethereum project, and beyond that, driving progressively towards rigorous decentralization. After building infrastructure products and services like MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, Diligence, Besu, Teku, GNARK, DIN, and Linea, which enabled the Ethereum ecosystem to flourish, Consensys is turning its focus on transforming products into protocol and to decentralizing what it has built and progressively decentralizing itself.
This is a pivotal moment for our company. Consensys is transforming itself to naturally evolve from a company into a Network State over time. By right-sizing and re-architecting our company now towards being a more loosely coupled set of orthogonal teams, we are positioning ourselves to contribute more effectively—not just as participants, but as builders of the Consensys Network State, supported by MetaMask and resident on Linea digital real estate.
There's much more to come, and we remain dedicated to pioneering the way forward.
MetaMask and Linea: Driving Innovation in Web3
MetaMask continues to lead the web3 space as a trusted gateway for millions of users globally. Even in challenging times, MetaMask has consistently empowered individuals around the world, providing secure access to the decentralized web. MetaMask also serves as a critical platform for developers, enabling them to experiment and innovate, contributing to the future of decentralized applications.
As we look ahead, we remain confident in MetaMask’s position as a foundational platform, helping drive the inevitable adoption of web3 and supporting the broader vision for decentralization.
We will deliver key innovations that continue to add value for our users and developers:
We will improve the core product experience and UI.
We will enhance our market-leading multi-chain capabilities, enabling seamless interaction across multiple blockchain networks.
We have also launched new innovations like the MetaMask card, which will further extend MetaMask’s utility and empower users in new and meaningful ways.
We are also excited for the future of the Linea network and its market-leading zkEVM technology and look forward to sharing more on its upcoming roadmap at Devcon in November. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be making concrete announcements that demonstrate this commitment to decentralization.
As our products and platforms mature, we are ready to decentralize and externalize them, offering high-value solutions that will help shape the decentralized future we all believe in—a world of disintermediation where opportunities are much more widely distributed, and accessible to everyone.