Proposal: Activate MetaMask x Mastercard Spend Program via Compound on Linea

Proposals
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Disclaimer: Gauntlet is submitting this governance proposal on behalf of Consensys. We have no material interest in the outcome and have received no compensation for submitting this proposal.

Late last year, a potential Mastercard deal was proposed to the Compound community. This opportunity would enable Debit Card holders to spend Compound assets directly with local merchants. Users could earn supply APR on their funds on Linea up until the moment they spend.

Through this partnership with MetaMask, Compound receives:

  • Instant‑spend integration: Cardholders can spend USDC, cUSDC, or cETH held in Compound on Linea through the MetaMask Ă— Mastercard debit card.
  • Built‑in TVL story: “Earn until you pay” positions Compound as one of the default savings layers inside every MetaMask Card.
  • Amplified reach: Linea and MetaMask commit to joint marketing to spotlight the new feature. Including but not limited to:
    • Twitter Spaces with the newly created Compound Foundation.
    • Spotlight threads on X.
    • MetaMask dedicated blog post highlighting the partnership.
    • Distribution through various other Consensys channels.
  • High-growth user base: MetaMask is working to scale up the card usage to its 30M MAU.
    • Currently, MM Card has over 50k users
    • United States general release moving out of beta plus new market launches in Canada, Africa, LATAM & the Middle East are scheduled over the next two quarters to augment the 36 countries we’ve already launched in
    • We are on track to gain 500k-1M users by year end
    • Compound gains direct access to spend-ready users as they cement on-chain payment habits.

The engineering integration work has already been completed. Compound has a USDC market deployed on Linea. No further development is needed from the Compound community.

Budget & Plan

To launch the MetaMask partnership, the following budget is requested:

$150,000 $USDC – Integration of cToken Off-Ramp
Covers integration costs and establishes a reserve to manage operational risks, such as depeg events. Baanx requires this buffer to facilitate fiat settlement while holding tokens. The reserve grows over time via off-ramping fees.

  • cUSDC - Currently live on Linea Mainnet
  • cUSDT - Will be added when market is live
  • cETH - Will be added when market is live

$150,000 $COMP – Comp Token CashBack

Provide 2% cashback in Comp tokens on 7.5M dollars of spend. We plan to use this cashback only on cToken spend to encourage the use of interest-bearing c-tokens on the card and the supply side for the markets. This will also be one of the first instances of a DeFi Token reward for card users to boost excitement and usage of cTokens.

Consensys will report back with a full report on the forum 6 months into the program, with analytics and data from the campaign for the DAO to review.

Additional Benefits

  • All MetaMask Card users are KYC’d, enabling fair and compliant reward distribution.
  • Option to provide cashback in COMP or other assets.
  • Reward structures can include partner campaigns. (Example: Mantle could allow cardholders to claim rewards by engaging with Mantle vaults.
  • Integrates Compound into real-world payment rails.
  • Unlocks new TVL and user flows from MetaMask’s growing card user base.
  • KYC’d users expand Compound’s addressable market beyond on-chain activity into everyday life.

Logistics

:white_check_mark: MetaMask integration complete
:white_check_mark: Compound USDC Comet deployed on Linea
:white_check_mark: Cashback user flow is integrated
Requesting DAO funding to activate:

  • $150,000 USDC (passed through to Baanx)
  • $150,000 COMP for rewards

Next Steps

Pending DAO support, funds will be deployed to:

  • Finalize cToken off-ramp infrastructure
  • Launch COMP-backed cashback
  • Kick off co-marketing and onboarding with MetaMask, Linea, and Compound Foundation

Summary

This proposal activates a high-profile, low-lift growth channel for Compound on Linea, backed by MetaMask and Mastercard. With DAO support, Compound can extend its footprint to real-world payments, expand TVL, and convert passive deposits into everyday spend, all while earning yield. We look forward to community feedback.

8 Likes
2

Supportive for breaking down barriers and enhancing Compound’s utility

3 Likes
3

I agree this is great news!

1 Like
4

Thank you @Gauntlet for bringing this proposal up.

We’re excited to see TradFi-oriented proposals on the forum. The Linea USDC market was originally created with this type of use case in mind.

Given the renewed interest and strong alignment, we plan to onboard USDT and WETH markets on Linea to better support this initiative moving forward.

It’s also worth noting that cTokens are rebasing assets. To address this and make them compatible with integrations, a wrapper was developed that transforms cTokens into yield-bearing tokens while also tracking accrued COMP supply rewards.

This initiative on Linea will serve as the foundation for expanding the “pay by debt” and credit card settlement concept to other chains as well, bringing this model to a broader set of users and networks.

We are supportive of this proposal and happy to provide technical help.

2 Likes
5

Having intimate details on initially bringing this deal together, I will call out a couple items.
CONS:

  1. A bit of Scope Creep: Our original deal did not include the extra $150k for 2% cashback.
  2. We lost first mover advantage: by voting against the growth campaign and now Lido, Yearn, AAVE have all launched with competitive yield products.
  3. There is no ROI time horizon and never has been.
  4. 50k users: Today the card serves 50k users and is forecasting a 10-20x jump in 12 months is a bit wishful thinking.
  5. Linea has not scaled L2 as a successful DeFi chain AAVE has $7MM, ZeroLend has $27MM in TVL. Realistically without any large ecosystem change Compound will likely not get to $15MM USDC market. This is the estimated market size where the payback period would effectively be 1 year assuming growth reserves by $150k/yr.
  6. VE DEX emission support Removed: Originally Linea offered to help deepen COMP liquidity on Linea through voter escrow voting.

That being said all the benefits available make the deal interesting:
PROS:

  1. Compound + Linea + MetaMask + Mastercard is a very good brand lift partnership worth $150k alone. $150k of $1MM Growth program integration budget was going to go towards this campaign.
  2. This will be the first good public example that the Compound DAO can point to as a win in Rails to TradFi. The more bridges we build to the Mastercards of the world the more we will get.
  3. There are more products coming out from MasterCard and MetaMask that will be highly beneficial to partner on this early to get access to future initiatives.
  4. Liquidity and Distribution should organically increase overtime as the number of Card Holders expand.

Conclusion:
I believe we should do the original deal without the cashback rewards or shrink the budget to $25k spend on rewards. This engagement will bring DeFi yields to real world users thru payments, and MetaMask is the perfect marquee partner. Over a long enough time horizon we can unlock additional campaigns and marketing budgets to generate fresh TVL and keep it sticky. We should have fee revenue finance the cashback actively managed via performance marketing analytics. That way success, not spend, dictates the pace of expansion. We can keep the headline partnership intact, signals Compound’s openness to TradFi bridges, and demonstrates an approach that should be good with growth minded and risk averse delegates.

3 Likes