The launch of MetaMask Snaps introduced expanded performance to MetaMask wallets, permitting customers to entry totally different layer-1 blockchains with no need to put in totally different extensions or pockets functions.
These options enabled the primarily Ethereum-based pockets app to change into interoperable with different layer-1 blockchains, corresponding to Bitcoin, Solana and Cosmos chains.
Snaps achieves this by deriving addresses from different blockchains, in line with Christian Montoya, the worldwide product lead for MetaMask Snaps.
“We are able to derive from a Cosmos deal with, so reasonably than going to a bridge that means that you can switch tokens from Ethereum to Cosmos, you may simply do this inside MetaMask and the Cosmos Snap that you just set up into MetaMask,” Montoya advised Blockworks in an interview. “The addresses you’re utilizing to bridge from one solution to one other are inside MetaMask and totally self-custodial.”
In consequence, Snaps might increase cross-chain visitors by giving customers easy entry to bridges.
There are at present 36 open Snaps in Open Beta, and the Cosmos MetaMask Snap is certainly one of them that has been made obtainable throughout this time.
MetaMask is at present one of the standard crypto wallets at the moment. In line with a report by CoinGecko, as of Aug. 1, 2023, a complete of twenty-two.66 million customers had put in the MetaMask pockets. Making it essentially the most used crypto pockets. Coinbase Pockets, the second largest pockets by set up, solely had 11 million customers.
Why Agoric’s hardened Javascript for Cosmos Snaps?
Connecting MetaMask to Cosmos was no straightforward feat, and the event group selected Hardened JavaScript for its capacity to function with third-party functions with out compromising safety.
Agoric CEO and founder Dean Tribble advised Blockworks that his group dug into analysis about the right way to make JavaScript functions safer, having beforehand labored with the founders of MetaMask on extensibility initiatives.
“Agoric was based round this: how do you harden JavaScript, how do you safely run confined elements written by different individuals whenever you don’t belief them,” Tribble stated.
Hardened JavaScript, beforehand known as SES, is what Tribble refers to because the “JavaScript you thought you had been programming in.”
JavaScript itself is mutable, so totally different libraries might change the programming language, Tribble defined. Hardened JavaScript locks down the programming language in the best way the spec says it’s programming in.
“It will get rid of some issues like non-determinism, but it surely makes it a lot better suited to blockchain makes use of, and it was actually the hardening within the capacity to run third-party elements that received [MetaMask co-founders] enthusiastic about it,” Tribble stated.