CoinWen.com reported:
MetaMask, a widely used wallet in the cryptocurrency circle, was officially sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday (28th). The SEC accused MetaMask’s Swap and staking products of violating federal securities laws and pointed out that Consensys, the parent company of MetaMask, has been operating as an unregistered broker since 2020, engaging in the issuance and sale of unregistered securities through MetaMask.
According to reports from Coindesk and Cointelegraph, the SEC mentioned in the lawsuit that MetaMask allows users to buy and sell digital assets directly within the application through its “Swap” service. Consensys charges fees for this service and has facilitated over 36 million cryptocurrency transactions in the past four years. The SEC claims that at least 5 million of these transactions involve “cryptocurrency securities.”
These cryptocurrency securities include tokens such as Polygon (MATIC), Mana (MANA), Chiliz (CHZ), Sandbox (SAND), and Luna (LUNA), which were classified as securities in previous SEC lawsuits. The SEC also suggests that some other digital assets may also be considered securities.
SEC targets staking services! Lido and Rocket Pool named
The lawsuit also points out that Consensys, without registration, has collected more than $250 million in fees through cryptocurrency brokerage transactions and staking services, depriving investors of important protections. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, civil penalties, and other equitable relief against Consensys for its alleged violations of federal securities laws.
This enforcement action confirms industry concerns that have persisted for a long time. Although the key documents for the Ethereum spot ETF were unexpectedly approved last month, reducing the possibility of ETH being classified as a security, the SEC is still trying to classify Ethereum-based liquidity staking tokens as securities, including Lido’s stETH and Rocket Pool’s rETH.
LDO plunges nearly 18%, RPL falls 6%
Affected by the SEC’s accusations, Lido (LDO) plummeted over 23% from $2.43 last night and hit a low of $1.86 this morning. As of the time of writing, it is priced at $1.95, a significant drop of 17.6% in the past 24 hours. Rocket Pool (RPL) has a relatively smaller 24-hour decline of about 6% and is priced at $19.23 at the time of writing. MetaMask, listed as the main defendant, has not yet issued tokens.
