  We revisit the proposal that an energy transfer from dark energy into dark
matter can be described in field theory by a first order phase transition. We
analyze the model proposed in Ref. Abdalla et al. (2013), using updated
constraints on the decay time of a metastable dark energy from the work of Ref.
Shafieloo et al. (2018). The results of our analysis show no prospects for
potentially observable signals that could distinguish this scenario. We also
show that such model would not drive a complete transition to a dark matter
dominated phase even in a distant future. Nevertheless, the model is not
excluded by the latest data and we confirm that the mass of the dark matter
particle that would result from such a process corresponds to an axion-like
particle, which is currently one of the best motivated dark matter candidates.
We argue that extensions to this model, possibly with additional couplings,
still deserve further attention as it could provide an interesting and viable
description for an interacting dark sector scenario based in a single scalar
field.
