MetaMask's co-founders have left, leaving behind a little fox included in the IPO prospectus.

Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow

The people who built this little fox don’t want to build it anymore.

On April 23, MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay announced his official departure from Consensys, ending a decade-long run of development. The reason was burnout—he wants to spend more time with his family.

MetaMask is probably the most recognizable product application in the crypto world. Almost anyone who has used a crypto wallet knows that orange little fox logo. In 2016, Finlay and another co-founder, Aaron Davis, built this browser plugin inside Consensys, so ordinary people could interact with Ethereum without having to run a full node.

Over the decade, according to statistics from multiple third-party platforms, global installations have exceeded 100 million, monthly active users are about 30 million, and the swap feature has generated more than $325 million in cumulative fee revenue.

After checking publicly available information, I found that over the past decade Finlay has almost never agreed to interviews. He used to write code at Apple; at his core, he’s still an engineer—not someone who comes out to “perform” a persona.

When a person like this says they’re tired, it’s usually true. It’s just that the timing of his departure makes it hard not to think more about it.

A few months ago, Consensys brought in JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as IPO advisors. According to Axios, the goal was to list as early as this year.

The company’s previous funding round was in 2022, when its valuation was $7 billion. Since then, it has gone through at least two rounds of layoffs. And the $MASK token has been calling for a release since 2021—five years have passed, and there’s still no movement.

Issuing tokens for wallets doesn’t seem so necessary anymore. Even more worrying is that the little fox also doesn’t seem so necessary to everyone anymore.

A default little fox—but not a must-have option

In the past, many dApp development guides began with “Please install MetaMask first.” It was the industry’s default wallet—like how, ten years ago, after installing Windows, that blue IE browser sat on your desktop.

The problem is that defaults and preferences are no longer the same thing.

Phantom originally only made a Solana wallet, then expanded to Ethereum and Bitcoin. In January 2025, it raised $150 million in a Series C round with a valuation of $3 billion.

According to estimates based on on-chain data cited by whales.market, Phantom’s annualized revenue is about $108 million; by comparison, MetaMask is around $46 million. That’s more than double, and Phantom launched five years after MetaMask.

Phantom got its start on Solana in 2021, benefiting from the whole arc of Solana’s ecosystem—from recovery to explosive growth. According to Helius, in 2024 Solana’s DEX trading volume already surpassed Ethereum, and in 2025 total on-chain application revenue reached $2.39 billion, up 46% year over year. 725 million new wallets completed their first Solana transaction in 2025. When these users came in, Phantom was already waiting at the door.

What about MetaMask? Native Solana support only went live in May 2025. Before that, if users wanted to touch Solana through MetaMask, they had to install a third-party plugin called Snaps—an experience close to installing a Chrome engine on Internet Explorer…

Over these five years, Solana—once a chain that nearly died after the FTX blowup—at one point became the chain with the highest transaction volume. Phantom followed suit, with its valuation rising too. In early 2025, it raised $150 million in a Series C round with a valuation of $3 billion.

I think MetaMask’s slowness isn’t because the technology can’t do it. There’s another layer: identity. MetaMask is the “kid” of Ethereum. Its parent company Consensys was founded by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.

Supporting Solana is expansion for Phantom; it’s betrayal for MetaMask. By the time the Ethereum ecosystem’s growth truly slows down and cross-chain becomes unavoidable, the window of opportunity is already long gone.

Of course, MetaMask’s compatibility within the Ethereum ecosystem is still the strongest—almost all dApp teams on EVM chains test it as the default option, and the 30 million monthly active users figure isn’t fake.

But this stickiness doesn’t come from product strength. It comes from switching costs. And switching costs can only stop old users from leaving—it can’t stop new users from coming.

Someone who only starts playing on-chain in 2025 will very likely not have MetaMask recommended to them by friends when choosing a wallet.

A fox you sell at a price

As the product falls behind and people leave, Consensys is preparing for an IPO.

According to Axios, in October 2025 Consensys hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as IPO advisors, aiming to go public as early as this year. If it succeeds, it will be the first company listed on the US stock market with deep, core-infrastructure ties to Ethereum.

But in the same year Consensys brought in investment banks, it also experienced at least two rounds of layoffs.

In October 2024, it cut 20% of its employees—about 160 people. CEO Joe Lubin said the reasons were macroeconomic pressure and regulatory uncertainty. Another round of layoffs happened in mid-2025, and this time the explanation changed to “driving profitability.”

On the well-known overseas job-review community Glassdoor, employee reviews are even more unflattering than the layoffs themselves.

Some wrote that the company lays off employees at least two rounds every year, and that it always cuts frontline contributors while management is never affected. Others said that after sharing their desire to be promoted with their superiors, their names appeared on the next layoff list.

It’s unclear how much of these reviews are emotion and how much are facts. But a company that slashes staff heavily right before sprinting toward going public—while employee morale hits rock bottom—is, in itself, a signal.

Then comes the story of the MASK token.

In 2021, Lubin posted a tweet on Twitter saying “Wen $MASK?”, and the community stirred. In 2022, he further explained that it would involve a token plus a DAO to push “progressive decentralization.” In May 2025, Finlay accepted an interview with The Block. When asked when the token would arrive, his answer turned into maybe.

For users, the MASK token is a carrot held in front of them—keeping them using it, interacting with it, and continuing to provide MetaMask with on-chain data. For Consensys, the token is a card that hasn’t been played yet before the IPO.

Release it too early and you dilute the valuation narrative; release it too late and the community loses patience. Now the co-founder has left, the token still hasn’t been issued, but the IPO is coming instead.

MetaMask’s product competitiveness is declining, and it will be difficult to reverse this trend in the short term. But MetaMask’s brand awareness is still there—the orange little fox is still the most recognizable crypto logo in the world.

Brand value and product value don’t decay at the same rate—brand decay is slower.

For crypto companies, what they often sell in an IPO is not just the product, but the brand narrative. “Ethereum infrastructure,” “Web3 entry point,” “the world’s largest self-custody wallet”… These labels were still effective in roadshow PPTs a few years ago. Lubin himself is an Ethereum co-founder, and that identity naturally carries halo for traditional investors.

So Consensys’s choice is to package MetaMask into a listed company shell while the brand is still worth something, while the regulatory window is still open, and while Wall Street still has enthusiasm for crypto infrastructure—letting the secondary market determine the price.

Silence isn’t gold

The news that co-founder Finlay left was met with a very muted response within the CT circle. There weren’t any farewell long-form posts flooding the timeline, and there wasn’t much sentiment like “the end of an era.” Most people didn’t even pay much attention to the news.

The comings and goings of the MetaMask co-founder had even less discussion than some KOL complaining about merch shrinking at a conference in Hong Kong.

This alone says something.

MetaMask is a rare case in the crypto industry. It has the biggest brand in the industry, but its founders have almost no personal branding.

In an industry where founders are the biggest marketing resource, MetaMask’s two co-founders chose to disappear into the background. The product spoke for them—until the product could no longer speak.

I think MetaMask’s story, at its core, is a story about “default.”

In the tech industry, becoming the default option is the strongest competitive advantage—and also the most dangerous sedative. When you’re the default, user growth doesn’t require you to do anything. It comes on its own.

But this kind of growth can mask the reality that the product itself is aging. By the time you notice users are churning out, the churn has often been going on for a long time already.

Internet Explorer was the default browser, but it lost to Chrome. Nokia was the default phone, but it lost to the iPhone.

Windows Media Player was the default media player, but it lost to everyone else. When those products lost, their market share was still high and brand recognition was still strong—but new users were no longer choosing them.

MetaMask is standing in exactly that position right now. Existing users are still there, and the brand is still loud—but incremental users have moved elsewhere. Consensys’s IPO plan, at its core, is about monetizing the existing user base.

In a stage where brand value is higher than product value, selling really is a rational choice.

The day Finlay left, MetaMask had just launched an advanced permission feature called ERC-7715. He said he expects to experience it later as an ordinary user.

For a product creator to become its ordinary user—that’s probably the most plain, quiet kind of farewell in the crypto industry.

But for MetaMask, how many ordinary users will still open that little fox every day next year? Are you still using it?