MetaMask Institutional | Q2 2023 Review

“It is only perfection in the foundations that can lead to mastery of the whole” – Galina Ulanova

GM.

Volatility has been a unifying theme over the last several quarterly updates. I have reflected on volatile crypto markets, impacted by macroeconomics, geopolitics, monetary policy and market conditions. And while crypto markets were relatively robust throughout Q2, with bullish altcoin speculation in April and May, this quarter was the period of volatility in regulatory policy.

Perhaps more importantly, I have also often reflected on our industry's optimism, mission-driven focus and second-to-none innovation cycles. It is also a cliche that bear markets are times to build. Hence, seeing the excitement, optimism and innovation across the ecosystem at EthCC a couple of weeks ago was not surprising. Q2 was a time for building for the ecosystem, and within MetaMask Institutional, it is and was no different.

"Se tan bueno que no puedan ignorarte." — Cal Newport

Within MMI, our first principal focus is on providing unrivalled access across three core clients. The MMI Extension allows access to the long tail of permissionless innovation. Our Portfolio Dashboard offers a curated web3 experience, while Programmatic Access provides APIs for our users. However, we know institutional users have essential needs beyond transacting. Hence, we also focus on building experiences that empower organisations to monitor, manage, control and report on their web3 assets.

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." — Helen Keller

A fantastic and exceptional partnership and announcement marked the year's second quarter. MetaMask Institutional and Fireblocks announced our joint integration. The integration brought together two prominent web3 powerhouses to provide the most complete enterprise-grade wallet security and portfolio management solution for institutional investors and builders. Over 1,800 organizations using Fireblocks will now be able to access MetaMask Institutional's (MMI) extensive suite of portfolio management solutions and leading DeFi connectivity to invest, trade, lend, and borrow on to 17,000+ dApps. For anyone wanting to learn more, please find the details [here.] (https://metamask.io/institutions/fireblocks/).

"The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life." — Charles Eames

Within the Portfolio Dashboard, we dedicated the quarter to the foundations of the product. Looking across our architecture and APIs to dramatically improve and scale our experiences. This work lies below the surface and might not appear as a new and exciting feature. Yet, we have strict metrics and goals around the latency of our user experiences. It also means we have the highest standards for test coverage, monitoring and observability to ensure our APIs have the highest uptime. We prioritised this work in Q2 as it strengthens the foundations of our curated experience and will allow us to ship new features for our users much faster in the quarters ahead. In terms of new features, we added user management within the Portfolio Dashboard. Empowering administrators to add and delete users along with setting different user permissions. Please see our changelog for updates on all the new features we ship.

Within our DeFi Services team, we offer detailed DeFi position views that entail valuations, claimed and unclaimed rewards details, profit, loss, and performance. We aim to provide DeFi valuation of any asset anywhere and offer an exceptional user experience with the lowest latency possible. In Q2, we expanded the range of DeFi protocols that we cover. While hardening our infrastructure. We have also conducted foundational work over the quarter and will launch a few exciting new features in Q3 of this year. Lastly, within our Web3 primitives team, we rolled out a series of improvements for our users. Namely, ensuring they always are given the lowest fee quoted by a Staking Service Provider within the MMI Staking marketplace.

In terms of growth, the number of signed organisations grew by 19.62% and the accounts they deployed by 13.70%. We are also seeing tremendously exciting growth in LATAM, with the region opening up crypto markets for users and organisations. Lastly, MMI achieved our SOC2 Type 1 certification in April. We are currently working towards SOC2 Type 2.

We will ship important updates across all our core product experiences as we look ahead to the next quarter. Our users will be able to better monitor, manage, risk control, distribute and report on their web3 assets. Our focus is not only to give our users access to any asset anywhere but ensuring our product experiences are safe, secure, reliant and performant. Q3 will also be conference-heavy, with Token 2049 and Permissionless occurring during the same week in September. For any readers that will be in attendance, do come to our booths and planned events. We are in service to you and greatly appreciate the time we can spend to understand how we can build a better product for you.

Sincerely, Johann Bornman

@johannbornman Product Lead