Joe Lubin is taking apart the company he built. Consensys — co-founded with Vitalik Buterin back in 2014 — announced it's splitting into two independent businesses. The MetaMask wallet, used by more than 100 million people across nearly 190 countries, becomes its own company. Everything tied to Ethereum infrastructure — the Linea network, the Besu and Teku clients, institutional software — stays under the Consensys name.
Lubin will run the new MetaMask as chairman and CEO. The institutional side goes to Mike Kriak as chief executive, with David Cunningham as president; Lubin keeps a seat as executive chairman there too.
The logic behind the split is straightforward: the wallet was outgrowing the rest of the company. In recent months MetaMask rolled out a Mastercard debit card, a savings account paying up to 4% APY in its mUSD stablecoin, perpetual futures, and prediction markets. What started as a browser extension has turned into something closer to a crypto bank, and that kind of product doesn't fit neatly inside an infrastructure company built for a different set of clients.
Lubin put it plainly: "We see a massive opportunity ahead of us as MetaMask is really maturing." Yet the company dodged questions about a possible IPO or its own token — something MetaMask has flirted with before. Lubin noted that today's US regulatory climate makes firms less inclined to issue coins than encourage them to.
The legal separation is expected to wrap up by the end of 2026, though the two units are already operating independently. For the market, it's another sign that major crypto players are preparing for closer scrutiny from investors and regulators alike — and splitting consumer from institutional books makes a future listing easier, even if nobody's saying that out loud yet.
