• 30M users
• One year+ in the making
• Turning the wallet into a messaging hub
MetaMask Snaps - The web3 superapp
As the world’s leading wallet, MetaMask is under constant pressure to keep reinventing itself to stay at the forefront of web3. This means integrating an increasing number of blockchains and an increasing number of features to keep up with the growing set of use cases across web3. Wallet messaging is certainly one of those which have been trending a lot lately. Enter Snaps.
A long time in the making, MetaMask has recently announced Snaps - which is essentially a system that allows third party devs to safely extend MetaMask’s functionality, creating new web3 user experiences. Although Snaps will be permissionless in the future, at current there is an allowlist of only 35 applications that have made the cut. You guessed it right, WalletChat is one of them!
Building the world’s first Snap for DMs
It was a long journey to get into Snaps! We first starting talking to MetaMask about this in August ‘22. It took us 9 months to receive a go-ahead which came with a grant. Then 4 more months of building, auditing, and finalizing various details, until the Snap was ready to go live in September, as part of the pilot batch - and the only integrated messenger.
Since launch, the WalletChat Snap has appeared inside every single public demo of Snaps done by the MetaMask team, so we must have done something right!
Each MetaMask user that opts in now receives a pop up notification for every DM. They can also respond to the message from the same pop up, completely doing away with the need to open the WalletChat web app. That’s a very neat user experience, we’ve been told.
The WalletChat Snap enables MetaMask users to access web3 chat directly from within the MetaMask extension. This is a better user experience for MetaMask users. The wallet is the gateway to everything we do in web3, and with Snaps like WalletChat, those web3 experiences can now be accessed from within the wallet itself.
- Christian Montoya, Senior Product Owner, MetaMask
Towards an integrated future
What does this mean for the future of web3? MetaMask is on its way towards becoming the default gateway to the new web. As more and more of the legacy web gets eaten by web3, more and more people will keep using MetaMask to access everything ranging from their finances to their messages.
Being able to send and receive DMs without leaving the wallet will be an extremely powerful feature for MetaMask, resulting in greatly increased engagement. Conversely, for WalletChat, being embedded inside MetaMask as a Snap means gaining direct access to MetaMask’s 30 million (and growing!) users - which is an amazing distribution channel for our messaging network.
Enable the WalletChat MetaMask Snap here.
