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How Metamask wants to win over businesses
Consensys, which develops the Metamask portfolio, is ramping up its institutional offering. Product Director Johann Bornman explains the American giant's strategy.
The Big Whale: What distinguishes the Metamask Institutional (MMI) wallet from the one everyone is familiar with?
Johann Bornman: It's very simple, it's a wallet that gives institutional players access to Web3. The structure was created two years ago with the aim of equipping businesses. This wallet provides a connection to decentralised finance, but it differs from the Metamask wallet used by individuals in that it has specific functionalities.
What are they?
The Metamask Institutional wallet offers the possibility of connecting to multiple digital asset custody solutions. This ranges from US law compliant solutions, through the ability to connect to MPC custody solutions and those that rely directly on blockchain.
Our goal is to enable organisations to access, control, monitor, manage and report on their digital assets.
Last week you presented a staking marketplace on Metamask Institutional, what will it be used for?
From Metamask Institutional, we want as many companies as possible to be able to participate easily in the validation of transactions on Ethereum in order to build the famous "global computer".
We had identified two problems until now. If a company wants to do staking, it has to go through each provider's terms of use. This takes a lot of time and they don't necessarily have all the skills in-house.
What we are doing at MMI is a form of standardisation of the conditions of use of the various staking suppliers in order to simplify the choice for interested companies. In particular, we can quickly identify what this can bring in terms of revenue and therefore choose the right supplier.
The second problem we identified was the wide variety of reporting standards. Some providers give you an API, others send PDF statements and so on. In reality, there wasn't really a staking experience offering institutional quality, standardised reporting.
What is the state of staking on Ethereum?
Staking is an increasingly crucial foundation in the crypto industry. For Ethereum, it started with the switch in September 2022 from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. This new consensus algorithm has reduced the blockchain's carbon footprint by 99.95%!
From 12 April, the "Shanghai" upgrade will allow the withdrawal of ethers immobilised in the staking process, whereas this was not possible until now. We can expect this new flexibility to attract new staking candidates and therefore businesses.
What is Metamask Institutional's business model?
MMI charges a commission each month, the amount of which is based on the value of the assets held in the wallet. Additional costs may apply depending on the provider you choose to ensure the safekeeping of cryptos.
The French start-up Kiln is one of your staking partners, why did you choose it?
We were very demanding when selecting our partners and we wanted to work with the best staking providers. Kiln is a very good partner, both for their offer as a validation operator, but also for the quality of their validators.
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