Although MetaMask may already be the preferred brand of thousands of crypto people, the well-known modern bag has the potential to appeal to many wider audiences as it begins to expand beyond Ethereum, starting with Bitcoin.

Whether on sites like Cryptocurrency or Solana, people are progressively exploring decentralized funding, or DeFi, across a broader range of communities.

Christian Montoya, Consensys ‘ product result for MetaMask Multichain, acknowledged the pattern in an interview with Decrypt and claimed MetaMask has been progressing in this way for some time. ( Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt ).

” Certainly, MetaMask is the O. G. Ethereum bag, and it was built for Ethereum”, he said. However, we’ve been looking into ways to go beyond that for a while.

Earlier this month, Consensys advertised a job posting for a product manager responsible for MetaMask’s “end-to-end Bitcoins knowledge”, designing and delivering possible future products.

The posting recommendations encounter with Ordinals and Runes—Bitcoin’s versions of NFT and post coin protocols, respectively—as a and. And while “anything is on the stand,” Montoya asserted that the fundamental Bitcoin features will undoubtedly be the point of departure.

” There’s a lot of various things that make up Bitcoin’s ecology, and it would be very hard for any budget to try to get all of that”, Montoya said. ” What we’re actually looking for is someone who can make strategic decisions about what the most crucial things to observe are,” he said.

MetaMask, which was founded by Consensys in 2016, gained popularity among cryptophiles when Ethereum NFTs sold at eye-popping prices in 2021 and 2022.

Ethereum isn’t, however, always the center of the blockchain habitat. As the prominence of high-value NFTs faded, meme currencies quickly took their place last year—and that habitat flourished on Solana instead of Ethereum, thanks to low prices and rapid purchases. DeFi has gained momentum on Bitcoin, as also.

Over the past year, Ethereum has even received some severe censure. ETH stagnated and has remained well little of its 2021 cost top, despite the fact that both Bitcoin and Solana have attained new heights and their prices have both soared in recent weeks.

Investors and builders are both outraged by the obscene cost actions, with some pointing to the Ethereum Foundation’s lack of involvement or the layer-2 network’s unanticipated worth drain as the cause of the abyss.

Only recently, the Foundation committed to several alterations, with Ethereum father Vitalik Buterin adopting a more “degen” personality—a “wartime” feeling, as some have described it. The voice change by Buterin has been widely seen as an attempt to unite his forces and engage with, among other things, the liveliness of the Solana community.

Going multi-chain

Even though previous attempts were fueled by outside developers, this isn’t the first time MetaMask has allowed exploration of various crypto ecosystems.

In 2023, the electric pocket launched its MetaMask Snaps have. It allows users to add community-developed features, such as Solflare’s Jump for managing Solana-based cryptocurrencies and NFTs, or Leap’s Jump for interacting with Cosmos ‘ Internet of Things habitat.

At the same time, Snaps allowed MetaMask builders to start modularizing the bag’s software, Montoya said.

Decentralized apps can connect and run across multiple networks together, according to him, and a cross-chain API will be released later this year as part of the internal work.

” The applications that designers can create today are somewhat limited by this legacy model, which is one consideration, one system at a time”, Montoya said, adding that the new API will help “at least 50 different non-EVM networks” already enabled through Snaps.

While MetaMask started using its multi-chain approach with full steam ahead about two years ago, Montoya claimed the plan was validated by assignments issuing resources across various networks over the past year. &nbsp,

Pudgy Penguins, the second-largest Ethereum NFT set by market cap, for instance, launched its PENGU gift on Solana next month.

May this change, however, be very much too soon for MetaMask after being Ereum budget for so long? In recent years, multi-chain foes have gained ground and are gaining traction.

The NFT platform Magic Eden, after first being built on Solana, went multi-chain in 2022. A year later, it debuted a cross-chain budget supporting Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and the Ethereum weighting system Square. Magic Eden traders had exclusive access to that wallet to declare the most recent ME key loss.

Phantom, which also supports Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 meme coins, as well as Ethereum and scaling networks like Base, announced a$ 150 million Series C fundraising round last week. In recent years, the wallet has seen significant adoption among post coin traders as a result of persistent rumors about a possible Phantom sign drop, which the company has denied.

In the Series C announcement, Phantom said that it had achieved 15 million monthly active users ( MAUs ). Nevertheless, Consensys reported that MetaMask had 30 million MAUs in January 2024. For this account, the business did not have any more recent information to share.

There are still splintering attempts to build a way forward in a multi-chain ecology, with more development required to bring it forth. But one researcher said that MetaMask’s move could be a step in the right direction.

” No one network is now control the output needed for a world, parallel, popular event”, VanEck Head of Digital Asset Research Matthew Sigel told . ” ]MetaMask’s ] move seems an acknowledgment of that reality”.

edited by Andrew Hayward and Sebastian Sinclair

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