MetaMask Snaps aims to facilitate a “multi-chain future”, allowing the Ethereum-based wallet service to support non-native blockchains and tokens for the Web3 economy.
Details of the latest addition in development to the growing MetaMask ecosystem were revealed at the StarkWare Sessions event in Tel Aviv, Israel, in February 2023. Speaking with Cointelegraph magazine editor Andrew Fenton, Alex Jupiter, senior product manager from MetaMask Snaps, revealed details about potential blockchain synergies.
In the past 18 months, development of Snaps has accelerated after the success of MetaMask Swaps, which brought token swapping functionality to the service’s native browser extension. As Jupiter explained, interoperability is becoming increasingly important in the blockchain space:
“MetaMask has historically been an Ethereum wallet. We have to start going beyond that. The multi-chain future is very clear”.
Snaps aims to create a permissionless ecosystem where developers can extend MetaMask in any way they want. Jupiter says the team is trying to create an environment where developers can use various application programming interfaces (APIs) from different blockchains to provide additional options to a user’s core wallet experience.
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MetaMask describes Snaps as a system that allows developers to extend the capabilities of the wallet extension. A plugin is a program running in an isolated environment that can customize a user’s wallet experience.
The possibilities are vast, with a plugin that allows adding new APIs to MetaMask, support for multiple blockchain protocols, and the ability to modify existing MetaMask functionality using external APIs. According to Jupiter, Snaps should be able to integrate with most blockchain protocols:
“Technically it is possible that we incorporate all of them. I’m sure there will be an extreme case. We’ve managed to extend Bitcoin, we’ve managed to extend StarkNet. So it should be possible with any of them.”
As Jupiter explains, MetaMask has already created a Bitcoin (BTC) Snap that allows users to interact with its protocol from within the wallet extension. This is a more difficult proposition than integrating compatible chains with Ethereum virtual machines like Polygon, but the end result is a highly interoperable wallet extension across the broad blockchain-based ecosystem:
“It basically means you don’t need to go anywhere else and MetaMask can be almost the core of your Web3 experience.”
Improving the functionality of Web3 is another driving factor in the development of Snaps. Despite bringing millions of users to Web3 through MetaMask’s tools, Jupiter says that simple actions like signing transactions can still be precarious:
“People have trouble knowing if they’re signing a transaction and if it’s secure.”
Jupiter believes that Snaps can address this area, allowing third parties to create information about transactions and potentially warn users about signing questionable transactions with unintended consequences.
MetaMask Snaps is currently available in the developer version of MetaMask Flask. Jupiter says the goal is to have Snaps integrated with the main MetaMask by the end of 2023.
