Morning Minute: MetaMask Teases $30M Rewards Program

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors green after BTC and Gold make new ATH; BTC at $124,500
• BNB hits new ATH at $1,300 and flips XRP in market cap to become top 3
• Grayscale launches ETH ETF staking in major first
• Polymarket nears $2B investment from NYSE, will partner on tokenization
• BMNR stock pops 12% after disclosing $14B in ETH holdings & $500M in cash

🦊 MetaMask’s $30M Rewards Are Incoming

A MetaMask token is indeed incoming.

And it’s coming along with a rewards program.

📌 What Happened

Season 1 of “MetaMask Rewards” will distribute $30M+ in incentives, including Linea (the ConsenSys L2) tokens, plus referral perks, mUSD bonuses, partner rewards, and “token access.”

MetaMask also posted that a rewards program is coming and warned against circulating “details” that aren’t official, indicating specifics will roll out in stages.

All of this lands just weeks after the wallet launched mUSD, its native stablecoin designed for wallet-native payments and DeFi flows.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“There’s been chatter about a MetaMask rewards leak. Those concepts were early prototypes — not live. But the vision behind them is very real. And it is all about building a token economy.” – Joe Lubin, Consensys founder on X

“Any of the details you’ve previously seen/heard are not indicative of what is to actually launch. Let’s talk a little bit about what the actual MetaMask Rewards program WILL be. This program will yield referral rewards, mUSD incentives, exclusive partner rewards, access to tokens, and more. However, it is not a farming play. It is shaping up to be one of the largest onchain rewards programs ever built – in MetaMask Rewards Season 1 alone, we’ll be distributing over $30M in LINEA token rewards.” – MetaMask on X

🧠 Why It Matters

There have been a lot of questions and speculation around how a MetaMask token would work. And how historical activity would be rewarded (if at all).

Well, this new rewards program likely raised more questions, but it did provide some answers.

We still don’t know how historical activity will be rewarded.

But one thing is now clear – there will be a playbook given from the MetaMask team on how to earn rewards.

And $30M in LINEA is just a taste of what’s to come (and a pretty big prize in itself).

Expect rewards to be given around mUSD, Linea DeFi, MetaMask perps activity and more.

With the airdrop likely to be in the 9-figure range, if not higher, expect a lot of competition with this one.

But given how busy the airdrop farming landscape is right now, perhaps dedicated users can find an edge…



🌎 Macro Crypto and Memes

A few Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are green after Bitcoin made a new ATH at $125,950 on Monday; BTC even at $124,350, ETH +3% at $4,700, BNB +7% at $1,298, SOL -1% at $230
• CAKE (+13%), XPL (+10%) and S (+10%) led top movers
• BNB hit a new ATH at $1,290 (+50% on the month), flipping XRP to become the 3rd largest crypto asset by market cap
• Bitcoin mining stocks ripped higher on Monday, with HIVE, IREN and peers outperforming
• Gold hit another new ATH at $4,000
• Bitcoin ETFs saw $1.19B in net inflows on Monday, their highest day since Nov 7, 2024
• Polymarket is nearing a deal with the NYSE parent compnay to receive a $2B investment
• Galaxy Digital’s Galaxy One led by BlockFi’s Zac Prince launched a “crypto + TradFi” platform, offering yield on cash deposits and trading in crypto and equities
• Real Estate company Open Door announced plans to accept Bitcoin
• Swiss regulator Gespa opened a preliminary probe into FIFA’s “right-to-buy” World Cup ticket tokens, examining whether Avalanche-based collectibles amount to gambling under local law
• Cathie Wood’s ARK Venture Fund put roughly $10 million into Securitize, a BlackRock-backed tokenization company
• Ondo Finance finalized its Oasis Pro acquisition, gaining broker-dealer, ATS and transfer-agent licenses to scale tokenized securities in the U.S.

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

• BitMine (BMNR) boosted its Ethereum treasury to roughly $14B, adding $823 million last week (BMNR stock +12% to $63)
• Grayscale Ethereum ETFs introduced staking in a major first for yield-generating digital assets

In Memes

• Memecoin leaders are mostly green, led by PENGU & Fartcoin; DOGE +1%, Shiba even, PEPE -1%, PENGU +5%, BONK +2%, TRUMP even, SPX -7%, and FARTCOIN +9%
• BNB memes soared with PALU (+940%), BINANCIANS (+550%) & PUP (+250%) notable top movers
• DOOD led notable movers on Solana, up 80% to $100M

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here’s a rundown of major token, protocol and airdrop news from the day:

• BNB’s PancakeSwap rebranded its IFO launchpad to CakePad, with no staking or lockups required
• Bee Maps (formerly Hivemapper) raised $32M to expand Solana DePIN mapping
• Yeet teased its Big Moments campaign returning this Thursday
• Trade dot xyz opened its waitlist for those who have traded $5M+ on Hyperliquid
• Rainbow Wallet added Hyperliquid perps to its wallet UI

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• NFT leaders were slightly red; Punks -1% at 48.2 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 10, BAYC +1% at 8.97 ETH; Hypurr’s -3% at 1,320 HYPE
• Checks (+30%) and Checks – Edition (+25%) were notable top movers ahead of their NFT Strategy token launch at 12 pm et today
• Punk Strategy fell 35% on the day to $180M after a whale one-clipped out $2.83M; Punk Strategy did acquire 3 Punks in the volatility, now holding 27
• Goblin Strategy (GOBSTR) debuted, running as high as $8M at peak before settling at $2.2
• A Punk Strategy competitor Punk Auction Strategy (PAST) ran 2 Punk auctions yesterday and currently holds 4 Punks
• NodeStrategy launched in the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem, acquiring 100 Nodes and raising the floor to 0.078 briefly (now 0.066)

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