Written by: Pzai, Foresight News
On May 14, Dan Finlay, co-founder of MetaMask, stated in a podcast that the wallet team is still considering launching a native token for the wallet. Although there seems to be no clear plan at the moment, Finlay pointed out that "there are more types of token issuance that are safe" under the looser regulatory framework of the Trump administration.
As early as 2021, MetaMask engineer Erik Marks proposed the idea of token issuance, and ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin also hinted at the market's interest in tokens that year. However, the market is now more focused on the TGE process of ConsenSys's Layer 2 product, Linea. On March 8, Linea announced that it would not issue tokens in the first quarter of 2025, raising community doubts about the TGE progress. In such a public opinion environment, will ConsenSys find another way to surprise the vast number of wallet users?
In the Wallet War, Is Token Issuance a Differentiation Strategy?
As a leading wallet in the Ethereum ecosystem, despite repeated delays in token issuance, MetaMask, with its massive scale of 3 million monthly active users, keeps the expectation of a token a focal point for the community. From trading data, the current trading volume of MetaMask Swap is relatively small, with daily trading amounts below $100 million for an extended period, significantly lower than the trading volume on the Solana chain platforms. As market liquidity trends heavily favor the Solana chain, MetaMask is gradually losing its market share, dropping from 77% at the end of 2022 to less than 3% now. Although MetaMask is actively connecting developers to introduce external wallets like Solana through tools like Snap, it still cannot compete with the rapid growth of exchange wallets in trading products.
In the current market environment, MetaMask may achieve decentralized operation through DAO governance tokens and deeply bind token functions with cross-chain interactions, including fee rebates, to strengthen its positioning as a multi-chain hub. This "delayed gratification" strategy, while somewhat manipulative, encourages the community to continue using the Swap function and participate in cross-chain transactions to increase airdrop weight. As major exchanges actively expand their wallet product lines and accumulate on-chain liquidity, token issuance could also serve as an opportunity for differentiation competition, aiming to recover liquidity while enhancing user activity.
Additionally, as the market environment warms up, the loosening of regulatory conditions also provides a compliance basis for token issuance. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had sued ConsenSys last June, accusing MetaMask of being an unregistered securities broker and illegally providing securities offers and trading services. However, on February 28, the SEC proposed to withdraw its enforcement action against ConsenSys and MetaMask.
With Linea's Delays, Are Token Issuance Expectations for Wallets Slim?
As an Ethereum Layer 2 project under ConsenSys, Linea has attracted users to participate in ecological tasks since its mainnet launch in 2023, leveraging its "backed by MetaMask" star aura and promising to airdrop tokens to early supporters through the LXP (Linea Experience Points) system. However, the originally scheduled token generation event (TGE) for the first quarter of 2025 has been postponed to the second quarter, with official reasons including "the need to improve token economics" and "complex legal processes." The community generally believes these statements lack substantial evidence and questions whether they are merely excuses for "endless delays." Additionally, as other Layer 2 projects (such as Starknet and zkSync) have successfully issued tokens during the same period, Linea's lagging progress has led to user funds being locked in the ecosystem, significantly increasing opportunity costs.
From a data perspective, assets on the Linea chain are continuously flowing to other ecosystems, with cross-chain asset scale now below $300 million. Linea product lead Declan Fox stated that the TGE will occur after the market transitions from bear to bull. Given the current market trends, we can tentatively expect Linea's TGE as a public chain project with a pre-trade FDV stabilizing around $2-3 billion.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
