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Author: Atara @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Translator: Scarlett LI @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Reviewer: Xiaosong Hu @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Abstract
- Snaps improves the previous drawback of MetaMask being only compatible with EVM.
- Essentially, Snaps uses the traffic and popularity of MetaMask itself to become an All-in-One platform for wallet entry.
- However, MetaMask Snaps does not solve the problem of the high threshold for using crypto wallets and will still hinder new users from Onboarding.
- By running under the sandbox, Snaps isolates risks to a certain extent, but it cannot completely guarantee security.
Quickly Read MetaMask Snaps and What Problems It Solves
MetaMask Existing Issues
MetaMask has only served EVM since its inception and was created based on the underlying protocol of Ethereum. The management and use of its accounts, the storage and protection of private keys, the confirmation and authorization of transactions, and the overall operation logic all follow the API interface specifications of Ethereum. As the first threshold for users to enter the Web3 chain - the wallet, users are actually operating You will encounter many complicated problems in the process.
Threshold
- Wallet usage threshold issue
At present, the mainstream wallet of Web3 is still the mnemonic EOA wallet (the mainstream representative is MetaMask). Imagine the problems that a novice needs to face when using MetaMask: including legal currency deposits and withdrawals, registering wallets, mnemonic phrase storage problems, and Gas payment methods are affected. However, multiple wallets under the main wallet also need to remember the private keys of each wallet for security reasons. At the same time, different RPC and other processes need to be configured when interacting with the EVM compatible chain.
Not to mention the asset security issues caused by copy-pasting, wrong links for deposits and withdrawals, and misconfigured RPCs during these processes. Most people may be stopped at this step and lose their patience. Although the characteristic of the EOA wallet is to return asset control to users, its complexity keeps most users away.
- Non-EVM wallet configuration issues
When users interact with the ecology of non-EVM chains, they also need to configure various wallet apps and go through the above process again. Judging from Defillama data, although most of the trading volume is still active on EVM chains led by Ethereum, there are also many users interacting on non-EVM chains. In this process, users still need to configure various cumbersome wallet applications for different ecological environments.
For example, users need to use Unisat when interacting with BTC on-chain assets, Sui wallet when interacting with Sui, Phantom when interacting with Solana, Pera Wallet when interacting with Algorand, etc.
Image source: https://defillama.com/chains 24-hour trading volume ranking of all DEX on the chain
The user wallet experience under the existing model is really bad.
Facing the first problem, the industry has low-threshold EOA wallets and low-threshold CA wallets as different types of solutions, but it still faces a situation where user activities are scattered in isolated islands.
MetaMask shifts its focus to the second problem - proposing MetaMask Snaps solutions.
Metamask Snaps is a new extension function recently launched by the Metamask team, which helps developers create their own Snap plug-ins to extend more functions of MetaMask, while also providing users with more customized functions.
Metamask Snaps Main Functions
From a developer's perspective, based on the API of MetaMask Snaps, developers write their own plug-in code through Web technologies (such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript), package it into a deployable Snap plug-in, and upload the functional plug-in to MetaMask After official review, it is available for users to download and use.
From the perspective of user experience, users have more flexibility and selectivity. Users can choose and install their favorite Snap plug-ins according to their own needs to obtain more personalized services, and can directly install them in the MetaMask interface. Install, enable and disable Snap plug-ins directly, eliminating complex configuration and installation processes.
In terms of functionality, MetaMask Snaps has three functions:
- Transaction Insights: Help users identify potential security issues before confirming the transaction process;
- Expand the scope of wallet usage: covering non-EVM chains, such as Bitcoin, Solana, Cosmos, StarkNet and other EVM Layer 2 solutions;
- Notifications: Users receive web3-related notifications on the MetaMask system.
Image source https://metamask.io/snaps/
Isolate Part of the Risk Through Sandboxed
In terms of security, all plugins of MetaMask Snaps run in a sandboxed restricted environment, which limits the permissions and access capabilities of the plugins to prevent malicious plugins from abusing the user environment, thereby isolating the security risks of the plugins to the user system and the MetaMask wallet itself.
sandboxed mainly provides protection mechanisms from the following aspects:
- Access control: sandboxed restricts plugins’ direct access to user funds, private keys, and other critical data. Plug-ins can only interact with the wallet through the API provided by the MetaMask wallet, and can only access limited functions authorized by the user.
- Sandboxed isolation: Each Snap plugin runs in an independent sandboxed environment, isolated from other plugins and wallet functions. This isolation ensures that code and data between plugins cannot interfere with or access each other.
- Code verification: The MetaMask team will review the plug-in code to prevent malicious behavior and vulnerabilities and ensure the security and compliance of different plug-ins.
Image source https://metamask.io/snaps/
Although Snap runs in a sandboxed environment to ensure a certain level of security, there are still some potential risk issues.
- Even though the MetaMask team will conduct code review and verification of all online plug-ins, there may still be risks of maliciously hiding or obfuscating the code to exploit review vulnerabilities;
- The environment of sandboxed itself also has the risk of vulnerabilities. Malicious attackers may also conduct vulnerability attacks on the audit of sandboxed itself, thereby conducting secondary attacks on Snaps.
- If the user accidentally grants too many permissions to malicious plug-ins during the permission granting process, there is also a huge security risk.
Security is the primary concern of users. Even though MetaMask Snaps has made a lot of efforts in a team and risk-isolated environment, users still need to remain vigilant and take necessary security measures, reduce clicks on links from unknown sources, and regularly update and upgrade MetaMask. And be wary of the security risks of various plug-ins installed by yourself.
What Can MetaMask Snaps Bring ?
As the leader in the wallet field, the market doubts MetaMask faces mainly focus on the threshold issues mentioned above. In the Ethereum account system, wallets can be briefly divided into two categories: EOA accounts and contract accounts. According to market feedback, EOA and CA wallets still cannot solve the problems of difficulty in getting started for new users and refined user needs, so two optimization directions for existing wallets emerged in the industry: MPC wallet and account abstraction (AA) .
Picture source: "A&T View: Low-threshold wallet - a necessary tool for the mass adoption of Web3 applications by the public”
As the Defilama data mentioned above shows, the current mainstream user interaction activities are still conducted on Ethereum, and the existing MPC and AA low-threshold wallets are still based on the Ethereum account system. It is difficult for us to tell whether user usage drives the team to develop wallets in a single ecological environment, or whether the team blindly rushes into wallet development in a single ecological environment, causing users to only experience a low threshold in that ecological environment.
Diversion Snap: MetaMask’s Traffic Monetization Path
Judging from the data mentioned by CoinGecko in "The Most Popular Cryptocurrency Hot Wallets in 2023", MetaMask's downloads have always far exceeded those of other hot wallets, even more than half of the downloads.
Image source: https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/most-popular-crypto-hot-wallets
The sixth anniversary report released by MetaMask in 2022 shows that its users exceed 100 million, and this is only data on the Ethereum ecosystem. But even with a huge user base, MetaMask has not imagined sharing the share of low-threshold wallets from the bottom end, but hopes to become a pure aggregation platform. Dan Finlay, co-founder of MetaMask and chief officer of Consensys, also said that MetaMask’s main purpose of launching MetaMask Snaps is not to compete with the low-threshold wallet category, but to focus on the functions of open wallets to expand its possibilities.
The overall development and launch of MetaMask Snaps is more like a collective platform. Firstly, it can help users experience different products. Secondly, developers can also use MetaMask's platform traffic to divert traffic to their own projects, breaking the single field of EVM. island effect.
In order to describe the workflow of Snap more clearly, the following takes Arweave as an example to demonstrate the work and usage process of Arweave Wallet Snap, that is, ArSnap:
- First find the snap of Arweave Wallet, which is ArSnap, at https://snaps.metamask.io/snap/npm/pianity/arsnap/ and click the Install to MetaMask button.
- After entering MetaMask, you need to pay attention to reading the authorization permissions to ensure that each permission is safe and feasible.
- After installation, users can seamlessly experience asset exchange on Arweave in MetaMask through ArSnap.
Through ArSnap, Arweave users can directly log in to the Ar wallet on MetaMask: the wallet accessed through Snap is similar to MetaMask's secondary sub-wallet, eliminating the tedious process of creating a separate wallet, and is not interoperable with the MetaMask main account assets, so that Ensure the security of the user environment.
Summary
Overall, MetaMask Snaps use regression to basic development as the interface, allowing developers to independently build on top of MetaMask without the support of the MetaMask team. The biggest innovation lies in the fact that developers can build features and integrations on MetaMask that exceed today's imagination, and can also create various unlicensed experiences to extend the functionality of DApp and MetaMask.
At the same time, ArSnap helps users of Arweave add a new choice when interacting with the ecosystem. However, in the overall experience process, due to ArSnap only supporting simple transaction functions, the functionality is not complete enough, and there are still some flaws in the interactive experience. ArSnap supports users to provide feedback on related bugs after the experience is completed, and I believe that with more user feedback and the team's efforts, it should be optimized in the future.
References
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230911652121/zh-CN/
https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/45248
https://metamask.io/snaps/
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