Crypto infrastructure company Consensys has announced the completion of its acquisition of Web3Auth. This is especially important for Consensys’ most popular product, a crypto wallet called MetaMask. Web3Auth is part of a broader effort to make the wallet more accessible to users who are not crypto pros. This is to allow newcomers to access the wallet without the complicated (and insecure) process of storing and entering passwords.
Lost passwords have resulted in 1.8 million bitcoins (about 9% of the total supply of the token in circulation) being stored in wallets that have been completely inactive for a decade or more.
The acquisition of Web3Auth comes 10 months after Consensys acquired Wallet Guard, a browser extension that warns users of potentially malicious transactions in MetaMask.
MetaMask is the most popular wallet for self-storage of cryptocurrencies. Since 2016, the app has been used by more than 100 million users.
Web3Auth, founded in 2019 and formerly known as Torus, has developed software that allows users to create accounts and log in to their wallet through their social media accounts such as Google, X, or Discord. Web3Auth also supports multifactor authentication (MFA).
The size of the agreement between Consensys and Web3Auth is unknown.
Source: Consensys