AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X METAMASK

MetaMask is a software cryptocurrency wallet used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to access their Ethereum wallet through a browser extension or mobile app, which can then be used to interact with decentralized applications. MetaMask is developed by ConsenSys Software Inc., a blockchain software company focusing on Ethereum-based tools and infrastructure. MetaMask allows users to store and manage account keys, broadcast transactions, send and receive Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies and tokens, and securely connect to decentralized applications through a compatible web browser or the mobile app’s built-in browser. MetaMask is the trailblazing tool enabling user interactions and experience on Web3. MetaMask is a global community of developers and designers dedicated to making the world a better place with blockchain technology. Their mission is to democratize access to the decentralized web, and through this mission, to transform the internet and world economy to one that empowers individuals through interactions based on consent, privacy, and free association. It join amazingly talented colleagues in the wider ConsenSys product family in working to deliver a more fair, free and decentralized internet-based economy for all.

We hosted an AMA session with Metamask on 25th October.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Eric was the guest. He shared with us the features and advantages of Metamask.
.
Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Hello everyone 👋 Welcome to Our Another #Special AMA session With MetaMask 🦊

To help us learn more about MetaMask, We are lucky to be joined by Mr. Eric

Eric B:
Hello, Thank you for having me~!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks for bringing Us MetaMask mate ❤️

First of all Can You Introduce Yourself To us?

Eric B:
Sure, my name is Eric Bishard @httpjunkie on Twittter and I am the DevRel manager for MetaMask~!

I help developers build on MetaMask~!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Nice to meet you Eric 🤝

Eric B:
you too!!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
I’m pretty sure that our Community is very much excited to learn more about MetaMask ✌️

So Let’s Start our first part of the session if you’re ready!!

Eric B:
Yes~!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
1. Please make a concise and brief introduction about Metamask.

Eric B:
MetaMask is one of the oldest and most beloved wallets in the Ethereum ecosystem, and it still holds the initial values and characteristics it was built on while continuing to iterate, validate and innovate on ideas around community, empowering users in a decentralized and open fashion democratizing access to the decentralized web. But in short, it allows you to transact and participate in the Ethereum blockchain.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks for the well start Eric

Let’s see our second question from this segment

2) Tell us features of Metamask that makes it superior and special as compared to its competitors?

Eric B:
I think that its users, developers, and its ubiquity in the Ethereum ecosystem are what sets it apart from the rest as well as its security supporting 30+ million users. If you are building dApps on Ethereum and you want to reach the most users as possible that need a self-custodial wallet, MetaMask gives you that.

You can access it through a browser extension and mobile application. Its Swaps feature and recently released Enhanced Gas UI, lets you to choose “low”, “market”, and “aggressive” presets; these features are my favorite and, in my opinion, provide amazing value for users over other wallet options.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
3. How is the Metamask secured? What are the security measures for saving of user’s assets?

Eric B:
MetaMask uses a lot of great features to protect against what we call supply chain attacks. At a high-level overview, it runs in a secure environment, and all the different pieces of code needed to run MetaMask are separate from each other unless they really need to know about one another.

There are also a lot of user experience features to secure MetaMask, a private key cannot be exported without a password, and the user is authenticated before any important action.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
4. How can a developer makes a dApp in Metamask and relatively what facilities and benefits Metamask provides to developers?

Eric B:
MetaMask provides a full gateway to Ethereum and similar blockchain networks. As such, MetaMask provides a full interface for Dapp developers to interact with all the famous protocols that are useful to make a dapps (Think NFT, Token Swaps and anything that can be built on top of Ethereum).

Because Metamask gives you full access to submitting transactions (to be approved by users), you can build any possible Dapp with it using our MetaMask API.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Sounds good for Developers 👍

5. What is Metamask Flask?

Eric B:
Ok, so I want to give a good explanation, so def give me a minute here…

As we build and iterate on MetaMask, we needed a special build of the extension, an experimental playground for developers to try out new features ahead of being available in the MetaMask production build.

It’s not that different from MetaMask proper, the extension millions of web3 users interact with every day, except that it has some experimental settings and features that you can use on testnets or mainnet Ethereum.

You can think of it similar to Chromium or Brave Nightly, a mix between regular MetaMask and a canary build. It is distinguishable by a purple logo, so in the case a developer has both installed, it’s very obvious that you are using Flask; otherwise, it looks and behaves the same in most regular cases with some additional features.

We can release new features that still need to be ready for the MetaMask production build. This gives developers a period of time to build with it and test new features months or more ahead of being released in the official MetaMask extension and soon will be available for MetaMask Mobile. MetaMask Snaps is the first prominent feature we are previewing in Flask, and many major dApps have already started building with it in preparation for the official release of Snaps.

Let me know if you want to hear more about Snaps 😉

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
We’ve Time for that You Can Share more about Snaps 😃

Eric B:
Snaps is an extensibility system for the MetaMask wallet. There are a lot of dimensions to the wallet where we find ourselves being gatekeepers inadvertently. At a point, we realized that everyone wants to add their specific network, custom token (Ethereum and non-Ethereum tokens can be added with a Snaps plugin), fraudulent transaction detection system, new blockchain, and new EIP method for better dApp logins, and these are things that we shouldn’t be the gatekeeper of. We’ve learned this the hard way. The blockchain space is full of very passionate and talented people that are very creative and may not implement something precisely the same way as we would.

There needed to be an extensibility layer added to MetaMask so that a dApp can offer an extension to our functionality and API. Just as you can change your browser’s behavior using browser plugins, you can now add functionality to MetaMask through extensibility. Create a unique set of features that can be installed directly from your dApp and let the user decide what permissions to grant a Snap. We are trying to get out of the way and allow for greater extensibility and customization of the wallet.

There are arguments made that MetaMask should be open source so that anyone can fork it and build something better, but the reality is that most would just fork MetaMask and add one or maybe a few very specific features, this isn’t ideal because we have an overall idea of how MetaMask should work from a core perspective, Snaps then gives anyone the ability to run the core of MetaMask and build their own custom features and still benefit from updates and our overall vision of the wallet. So this again lets us enable them to do that without compromising the security and functionality of MetaMask.

The heart of actual community-driven creativity is more about composability in the same way that Ethereum is about smart contracts being able to interact with each other, the wallet is similar to your own personal smart contract space where you declare what you care about. These are your assets and what you’re willing to connect to and put trust in. Snaps is an answer to “how do we bring in all of this innovation”, and ”how do we get out of the way and let people contribute to wallet evolution at the speed of their creativity and not at the speed of our iteration or review process”.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
7. Now tell us about the Swap feature of Metamask. What are its features for using?

Eric B:
MetaMask swaps is available for our users on both the browser extension and the mobile wallet, and in our opinion, is the easiest way to trade Ethereum-based tokens from within MetaMask. You just choose the token you own, and the one you want to swap to, and MetaMask gives you a quote for the trade. It’s still up to the user at that point to finish the transaction and complete their swap.

The UI also gives you many different quotes to choose from, so that you can make the right decision for you at that time.

So what it’s doing behind the scenes comparing various DEXes, aggregators, and market makers to find the best price from the top liquidity providers with the best price, lowest network fees, and the least slippage. This is something that the trader would typically have to do on their own and really can save you time and hopefully bring you a better value for your trade.
The ability to swap a wider range of tokens than most other services out there is a key reason to use it. Swaps can also split your trade up amongst several providers to give you access to greater combined liquidity.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
8. Share us about the Swag Shop.

Eric B:
Thanks for the softball, but it’s a great question our MetaMask shop has some great swag prominently featuring our brand and some of the amazing swag that we have provided at events over the years, like Devcon 5 in Osaka, Japan, and others. But ultimately, if you just want to swag out with our friendly fox, this is the place to go and get that merch.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
9. How about the team and their experience in progress of Metamask?

Eric B:
The Metamask team is comprised of some of the most pioneering and smartest engineers in the Ethereum ecosystem, they have been integral in creating standards and Ethereum Improvement Proposals, some of which are directly tied to the APIs and methods used when interacting with wallets and even inspire other blockchain functionality. People like our founders Kumavis and Dan Finlay and our CEO Joseph Lubin are among these pioneers at ConsenSys and MetaMask, also engineers like Erik Marks who is integral in developing Snaps and so many others that I would be here for days trying to list them all out.

We also acquired the MyCrypto team in early 2022 with their founder Taylor Monahan who we have integrated into our own team and have amazing products that will either soon be released or have already started to be integrated into MetaMask. But this product “My Crypto” wallet and their team have been a huge addition to our teams and provide even more ecosystem experience and capabilities.

I want to also point out Guillaume Bibeau-Laviolette who is our newest Developer Relations and Developer Experience Engineer that comes to us from Vercel, he was instrumental in building and showcasing example projects for building in web3 and deploying on Vercel, he also writes an amazing blog on Web3 UI and UX called web3-fullstack.com and it’s people like this that keep adding value to our team.

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Lastly, what Metamask achieved so far and what important updates and developments we’ll get in coming months in Metamask ecosystem?

Eric B:
MetaMask has recently launched a lot of nice UX improvements making the usability of the application much better for newcomers to the industry. Soon, a software development kit will be released to help developers create applications without knowing all the API details. This will make it easier to get up to speed building a Dapp really quickly instead of having to deep dive into the documentation as the SDK provides a higher level of abstraction for builders.

*This session ends here*

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Thanks Eric for this well detailed introduction about MetaMask 🦊

Eric B:
I hope that everyone has learned a little more about MetaMask and our products and some of the cool stuff we are doing, thanks so much for having me. My DMs are always open!

Ramsy | Crypto Miners:
Ya…Definately that helps to learn more about MetaMask and the products 👍

Thank you so much for being here…

Community, If you would like to learn more about MetaMask, here are some useful links for you:

Website: http://metamask.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/metamask/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/metamask
Medium: https://medium.com/metamask/