Mask Network's MASK is a live ERC-20 token that launched in February 2021 with a fixed 100 million supply and trades around a $35 million market capitalization. MetaMask's token, which the market already calls $MASK, had not launched as of August 2026. They are unrelated projects, and only one of them is currently buyable.
The distinction matters because search traffic does not respect it. A trader searching the ticker finds price pages for Mask Network, airdrop guides for MetaMask, and a growing volume of phishing sites built to harvest wallet approvals from people who cannot tell the difference.
Two Assets, One Ticker
| Mask Network MASK | MetaMask token | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Live since February 2021 | Unlaunched as of August 2026 |
| What it is | Governance token of MaskDAO | Expected token of the MetaMask wallet |
| Issuer | Dimension / MaskDAO | Consensys |
| Chain | Ethereum ERC-20, bridged to BNB Chain, Polygon, Energi | Unannounced |
| Supply | 100,000,000, fully circulating | Unannounced |
| Market cap | ~$35 million | Not applicable |
| Confirmed ticker | MASK | Not confirmed by Consensys |
| Tradable today | Yes | No |
The last two rows deserve emphasis. Consensys has publicly confirmed that a token is coming and has never confirmed the symbol, so "$MASK" is a community label that stuck. CoinCodex's tracking of the launch puts the widely forecast window at the third or fourth quarter of 2026, with distribution mechanics still unannounced.
Why the Collision Happened
Both names come from the same metaphor and neither project was thinking about the other. MetaMask launched in 2016 as a browser extension that gives a website a masked identity to transact with. Mask Network arrived in 2019 as a browser extension that masks what you say on social media, and it named its token after itself in 2021, five years before Consensys signalled any token plans.
The overlap is uncomfortably tight in practice. Both are browser extensions, both live in the Chromium and Firefox stores, and both sit between a user's wallet and a website. The functional difference is that MetaMask is a wallet, while the Mask Network extension is a social layer that connects to a wallet you already have, MetaMask included. Users routinely run both at once.
The Ways Traders Get This Wrong
Four failure modes show up repeatedly:
- Buying the wrong ticker. Someone anticipating the MetaMask launch searches MASK, finds a live market, and buys Mask Network by mistake. The order fills, the position is real, and the thesis was for a different asset.
- Believing a claim page. Mask Network finished distributing tokens in 2021, so any site offering a MASK claim is either the unlaunched MetaMask token or a scam. Consensys has issued repeated warnings about fake portals, and reports of claim-domain registrations have made the impersonation problem worse.
- Approving a malicious contract. The typical attack is a fake claim page that requests a token approval rather than asking for a seed phrase. Understanding how legitimate airdrops work is the cheapest defence available.
- Misreading price history. A chart of Mask Network showing a $41 print in 2021 says nothing about the value of a Consensys token, yet it circulates in threads as if it did.
Anyone actually positioning for the Consensys launch should treat it as a separate exercise entirely. Our guide to MetaMask airdrop positioning covers the Rewards programme, which distributed over $30 million in LINEA tokens during its first season between October 2025 and January 2026 and remains the clearest signal of how eligibility will be measured.
Checking Which MASK You Are Trading
Three checks resolve it in under a minute:
The contract address is definitive. Mask Network's Ethereum contract is 0x69af81e73a73b40adf4f3d4223cd9b1ece623074, verifiable on CoinGecko or any block explorer. Before importing a token into a wallet that holds MASK, match that string character for character.
Market data confirms it. Mask Network shows a market cap near $35 million, 100 million circulating supply, and a rank around #564 as of August 2026. Any listing claiming billions of tokens, an active claim window, or a market cap in the hundreds of millions is describing something else.
Exchange pair naming settles the rest. A MASK/USDT pair on a regulated venue is Mask Network, because the Consensys token has no market to list. If you can trade it today, it is the 2021 ERC-20.
What Each Token Would Actually Represent
The two assets are structurally different even beyond the naming. Mask Network's MASK tokenomics give holders governance weight in MaskDAO and access to gated features, with no fee share and no supply changes possible. It is a fixed-supply governance claim on a product suite that includes Firefly, Next.ID, Web3.bio, and stewardship of the Lens social graph since January 2026.
A Consensys token would arrive attached to the largest self-custody wallet in crypto, with tens of millions of users and an in-app swap and bridge business generating real revenue. That is a fundamentally larger commercial base, which is why the anticipation is so heavy, and it is also why the eventual valuation gap between two assets sharing one ticker is likely to be enormous.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mask Network the same as MetaMask?
No. They are separate companies with separate products. Mask Network is a social-layer browser extension and the MASK governance token launched in 2021 by Dimension and MaskDAO. MetaMask is a self-custody wallet built by Consensys, and its token had not launched as of August 2026.
Can I buy the MetaMask token yet?
No. As of August 2026 the Consensys token has not launched, no contract address exists, and no legitimate claim portal is live. Any site offering it for sale or claim should be treated as fraudulent. The most commonly cited launch window is late 2026.
Will Mask Network have to change its ticker?
Nothing forces it to. MASK has traded under that symbol since February 2021 across dozens of venues, and exchanges resolve conflicts by appending a suffix to the newer listing rather than renaming an existing one. Expect the collision to be handled with disambiguated pair names rather than a rebrand.
Verify the Contract Behind the Ticker
Ticker collisions are ordinary in crypto and this one is unusually consequential, because a heavily anticipated launch is about to point enormous search volume at a small-cap token that has existed for five years. Volatility on Mask Network around the Consensys announcement is a reasonable expectation, and it will have nothing to do with Mask Network's fundamentals.
That creates an opportunity and a trap in equal measure. A trader who understands the MASK price outlook on its own merits can position around confusion-driven volume, while one who conflates the two assets is exposed to a repricing they never intended. The contract address is the only thing that settles which token you own.
Trade MASK on spot or take a leveraged view with MASK perpetual futures on LeveX, where the listed pair is Mask Network's ERC-20. Browse Crypto in a Minute for more token breakdowns.