📺 Will MetaMask Drop a Token? Breaking Down the Biggest Wallet Merge Ever

hey bankless nation welcome to another state of the nation episode where we talk about something big that is happening in crypto this week the news is big this is the biggest wallet merge ever i think i'm calling it that as far as we're aware this is the biggest one ever this is between metamask and my crypto david what are we talking about today yeah everyone uses metamask how can you not know what metamask is so anytime something happens to metamask it's a really really big deal uh and the veterans of the crypto industry might also have remember when

they were loading up their wallets into my crypto to participate in like ico drops or any other crazy shenanigans that uh that we that we did during during that area era and so we have two veterans of wallet designers we have dan finley and taylor monahan uh coming to tell us all about what is the perhaps the biggest merger in wallet history uh and so that is a story in of itself and and everyone kind of wants to take a peek behind the scenes of metamask and what they are up to which is exactly what we are going to

be doing today on today's state of the nation yeah it's gonna be awesome these two uh wallets and user interfaces are what got me into the game space what got me into crypto so i'm really excited for this merger they're coming together i don't know if it's gonna be called crypto mask metacrypto or my crypto mask we'll have to ask our guest in a minute and if you have a question also let us know what you want us to ask in the youtube comments uh david and i monitor those and we ask questions guys a few housekeeping items before we begin the first is we got to let you know about

the permissionless conference that is a conference that i am attending david is attending we think this is going to be the biggest defy conference of the year probably ever super excited about the agenda we have planned uh get your tickets is all i can say anything you want to add to that david oh i'm absolutely stoked for this conference the the content calendar is coming together very very nicely bankless and beers will be a thing uh and so perhaps ryan and i have this uh chariots of fire running across the moment stage at this brewery i don't know for the first time

i mean we're gonna meet for the first time maybe you guys want to attend for that there might be a po app um but yeah you gotta come you gotta come gotta come to the event yeah yeah go check that out guys we'll include a link in the show notes also our friends at xerion while we're on the topic of wallets and metamask and and getting into d5 the gateway to d5 want to talk a little bit about uh zirion they are friends and sponsors and uh you might use them on the daily if you don't you should i use them on a daily basis if you connect your wallet to it you'll notice some incredible new

feature ads one is this is not my wallet by the way but uh you could click here on all networks you could see all of the different networks your assets reside on so this is ethereum this is optimism so layer twos we've got avalanche other evm chains they're adding more all of the time also this nifty little feature bridging we are in the midst of the great migration from ethereum mainnet to layer twos okay and if you want to bridge your tokens xeron has a feature for that where you

can just bridge from ethereum to polygon or look finance uh better yet optimism arbitram some other chains as well you can make that happen at uh xerion we'll include a link in the show notes so you can go check that out connect your wallet today completely bankless by the way no bank has control of your assets when you're using xero it's just you your private keys and the xeron user interface the way we like it that's the way we like it right david absolutely right i wouldn't have it any other way wouldn't have it any other way

all right guys we're going to be back in just a few minutes uh oh no no dude i gotta ask you the question yeah you just forgot yeah this is a good state of the nation today david ryan hear what you say the state of the nation is alliterating metamask my crypto merger so ryan today on the state of the nation we are alliterating uh we don't really have to unpack that one too much together all right there might be some depth there that david uncovers in like a 10 000 word piece that he publishes on bank lists later on or maybe there's no depth maybe it's just alliteration that's what we're

doing this week right stay tuned to find out guys we will be back in just a moment with uh taylor and dan talking about this epic merger but before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible slingshot is a decentralized trading platform that combines the performance and ease of a centralized exchange with the openness and transparency of defy slingshot aggregates liquidity from all of d5 in order to find the best price on thousands of crypto assets every token on slingshot comes with a price chart and trade logs to give you insights into the market's activity in real time

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in order to experience defy and nfts the way it was always meant to be fast cheap and friction free all right bankless nation we are back to discuss the metamask my crypto merger the triple m here we got dan finley who has been building metamask at consensus for like six years now and also taught me everything i needed to know about merkle trees in his devcon zero talk which i think happened in seattle which burned into his brain that's not all that miracle trees can do uh and we also

have taylor monahan who is the founder and ceo of my crypto which started being everyone's first wallet during the ico era of ethereum and extremely challenging time to be a wallet operator and taylor has taken these uh these veteran lessons all the way through and through ethereum's history to where uh we are now today which is a merger between metamask and my crypto so dan taylor welcome to bank list and congratulations on the guys on the merge guys yeah thanks so much it's been a long time coming

it yeah it has been a really really long time coming and i'm excited to finally get to talk about this and see let's see what's up next for us wait that's some alpha so how long have you guys been talking like how long uh you said this is a long time coming it was oh well it's part of the plan or is this oh i meant it in two senses i meant i meant both like we've been like kind of building wallets alongside each other for so long that it almost it almost just feels like it's kind of built up to this and then also yeah we've been like

you know like tossing around the idea of what this could possibly turn into for yeah i don't know like what like six months or something like it's like you know figuring out if we could conceive of it working was like i think the most important part yeah we didn't uh talk to anyone else about it until we are like somewhat confident in uh the success of it and particularly for like the teams um as i'm sure most people are aware like the hardest thing about doing emerge is the people and

bringing them together um and so that was sort of our focus uh and i do remember for timeline's sake at one point i was like okay once we get through eip1559 then we can really talk about this so that's how long it's been uh you know one other thing that um both of your your solutions both your projects have in common is um you like the customer support the front end help desk customer support for crypto which i'm sorry for

yes uh and taylor i know my crypto uh then called my my uh ether wallet was uh so key during like 2017 ico i mean it's what everyone used what i used and i remember reading like basically you're doing help desk stuff on reddit forms for people like it was an incredible time and then metamask dan you know no different if there's an issue with with my transaction didn't go through block spaces you know gas fees are too expensive where'd my money go on

the front end yeah it looks like dan is shuttering like just thinking about this yeah yeah we have some very uh shared trauma okay so you've got some sheer trauma is that a unifying thing being the the help desk the front customer support of ethereum of crypto oh yeah i mean i would put it like like when you go through something like that together it's like you're bonded for life and the people that uh were sort of on the front lines in 2017 like those are still some of my

best friends to this day uh like the people like that we you know the fishers and the scammers came out of nowhere uh that group of people that all like stood together trying to solve this problem and fix stuff uh we're still all all very close and like in particular me and dan just because we're also trying to run a wallet thing and build the future of everything and keep people safe you know you just you have that that shared experience and that

i don't know loneliness like no one understands me but we understand each other it's fantastic i feel like it transforms you when you go through it because like it teaches you so much about what's what this ecosystem is and what it's made of and like when you're helping these people like there's like so many different people with so many different you know you thought you just taught some people with some hackathon and then suddenly you know it's it's a you know grandma in kansas or you know it's like you know like a an artist in lagos or

you know and you're just like you're just like oh okay how did you get into that you know you're like what's your problem or like what's your you know where are you at in this journey and like understanding all the different ways people can can uh kind of like mess up and lose their money or something i think it like builds up like this like reverence like like it was it was all fun building in like 2016. 2016 it was like yeah add some add some apis add some features we have like changing the world baby yeah yeah and it was it was fun and and

what's funny is like you know there's like some apis that we made that are like they were like kind of half-baked those are those are 2016 apis like you know it was easy to go in times you know the bar was a little bit lower but but man yeah like once once it gets real once once you like have you know a cert there's there's like a level where people like you you realize like for some people this is their whole life you know and uh you know like i mean and i i don't i'm not advising people put their whole life savings into crypto if they don't understand it but some people are

doing that you know and you gotta if you're a wallet you should be building as if people are doing that and uh yeah there's just this reverence for it uh for the process and for for like you know the experience in like what it means to have this like digital asset manager that uh that i think i think that we have a shared kind of reverence for a certain respect for like where the bar is at to keep users safe and uh yeah so so it's it's kind of easy i find i find that we like agree about a lot of product principal decisions like

when we're talking about pretty much any you know little feature like someone's like you know oh you know you should it'd be really nice if you were you know uh whatever and then like we tend to consistently you know like uh i don't like auto detecting nfts is like one of those things where it's like it's really easy to want that as a user um the failure modes though are not obvious to everyone but for somebody who's like seen thousands and thousands of people get phished in a million different ways you know like uh yeah like we i think we

just have like an eye for the ways that it's just like oh oh just constantly seeing things go wrong and yeah and it's it's a rare kind of insight and i so so respect how much of it taylor's got and she she shares it liberally too like like i'm i'm definitely quieter on twitter but you know she makes it very obvious and tries to help other people see it that you know i try yeah i try i yell at people and hope that they're listening to me so i actually want to dive into that

because you guys dan you talked about the alignment between the the building the ethos of both of your guys's wallets and so i want to understand what that what that is what is the thing that both uh metamask and my crypto are super aligned on and how is that going to guide the product moving forward yeah i think that for the i think both me and dan have sort of undergone a i don't know and a transformation evolution from like the very early days to where we are today and i think a lot

of other people will uh get there eventually but it's uh the wallet is like probably the most key piece of of infrastructure of product in the entire space um for me like i was like yeah just build a paper wallet generator yay okay it's just this thing that uh allows you to sign things like whatever that was sort of my first uh like the first couple years of building that's what it was like and then in 2017 it turned into like oh

okay like the wallet has the ability to protect but everyone else is sort of like driving people into the ecosystem right like everyone else is promoting their icos bringing people in and the wallet is like the sort of the last stop where you know we have this opportunity to save users um and today i realize it's it's like the wallet is not only the last stop or like the last trusted space or the one place where we could save a user from like interacting with a scam or uh or doing something else but it also

sort of has this responsibility of giving people the power to interact with these things um and because of that the wallet also has like the ability to abuse that power right and that's why i think it's really really important that the people who are building wallets and the teams and and people who are using wallets all sort of understand just how integral it is that you know things are built in the correct way uh that the focus remains on empowering the user and giving them choice

um that it does not uh you know we don't go into like censoring transactions or babysitting like we actually we really need to educate and empower people um if if there's any chance that we're gonna build like a a different world let alone a better world um and dan understands this like he's had some vlogs out recently where uh like his response to the the moxie article was when i was like he gets it that's what's in my head that i haven't had a chance to like get out into words yet um

and yeah i think that the next couple years i think are going to be increasingly important as well because um again you know whenever the the market cycle cycle it's uh there's like this flood of users who don't really understand what's happening they're really really excited for the potential and it's during that uh the sort of the down periods where um people actually understand like the values and understand why this is important um and i think that yeah next couple years are gonna be fun ones the this is exactly what you said this

entire industry is completely pinned on top of private keys private keys are just the the thing that unlocks everything first it unlocks people like being able to hold crypto but it really does so much more than that right and i think people are starting to get an idea of what that means with nfts right where you know these nfcs are starting to become tools of identity uh but also the trustless verification of signing private keys can unlock so many new superpowers which means that all of the superpowers that people are able to access because of private keys all resides inside of the wallet that they

choose to use which gives wallet designers an immense amount of responsibility for how they choose to design their systems and so while i think maybe people coming in from to this industry who are brand new are like oh yeah just give me the best wallet ever they don't understand the magnitude of the question that they just asked or the request that that they're making so um question a question to you guys is now that you guys have merged what is in store like what comes next what happens to my crypto what happens to metamask wallet and is this changing

the trajectory of metamask in any particular way you want to do it all right i think it's gonna i mean we're in the process of merging so we're like our teams are like getting acquainted getting to know each other um finding their place um you know we're we're not uh sunsetting the microphone products because they're like total bastions of stability for a lot of people who who need like you know that that derivation path that nobody else uses with that

you know while it doesn't support it otherwise uh or you know or just like a million of the other features it provides um but um yeah there's there's a lot of things that become possible i mean kind of to tie in the last topic it's like being that last bastion of trust for a person when they're interacting with stuff like i sometimes think of us as like we're like your digital lawyer like oh this is what this is what that'll mean you know and the thing is that the amount of knowledge your ideal lawyer would have is like boundless you know so

being able to have this expertise like you know we've now got twice as many experts on 1559 you know we've got uh twice as many experts on hardware wallets now um you know and uh and now we've got experts on uh built maintaining a desktop app um so that's you know a little bit of a trajectory shifter uh for sure um so yeah yeah what other ones are jumping out of you um god i know it's it's tough because everyone's asking us what we're doing with the products and we've been so

focused on just making sure that the teams are going to be aligned and like that every individual has like uh a place and like they have they're empowered to like continue you know creating value and more value and that kind of stuff so on the product end it's kind of like uh it just hasn't been our focus but i think there's some obvious uh sort of next steps or where we're coming one is i think that the the potential for a desktop application with metamask is an obvious one we've been working on

uh like we have our existing desktop app but we've also been working on this new uh sort of very lightweight signer that's just like the core uh i guess the core of a wallet um and we can build that out um and that acts more similar to how mad mask acts where you basically have uh like a website or a dab that is is where you're uh getting the information that you need and you're constructing the transaction and then the desktop uh applet i guess signer thing that we're we're building

um that's just that that final piece and so it's responsibility is sort of just this the i guess the last mile right where you sign it and you want to know what you're signing um and uh uh the desktop just it enables a lot of i guess functionality that that the browser doesn't um the other thing is you know metamask has a a list a mile long of things that we can improve upon things that can be cleaned up um

some of it is is like indirect response to users and support tickets and that kind of stuff uh some of it is uh the mile long list of twitter commentary that floods in literally every single day um and i think it's really important that we uh you know in as the team is scaling up as the users are just like streaming through the front door uh we get better at prioritizing like how all of these different desires um fit into both the short-term plan and the long-term plan right because we have to

balance the bugs and the security issues or the privacy issues with um you know the really influential guy on twitter who decided that today was the day where he was going to unleash the the torrent of complaints onto dan um and yeah i think working together on all of these things it's like it's not just like new fancy things it's also just really really improving what we already have what about the the branding what's happening to the my crypto branding is my crypto turning into metamask or are

we keeping the my crypto branding what's going on there the i honestly assumed that uh my crypto the microphone brand would like be slowly phased out in favor of metamask but uh you can't tweet the word metamask right now without being like just having a pile of reply bots on you oh my god yeah so for the listeners i tweeted out like the link to this uh live stream via twitter and like instantaneously seven bots came and said hey like do you need metamath support email this scam email

or fill out the scam scam form yeah then which obviously is requesting for private keys uh that must be a mess yeah so we're keeping the my crypto brand alive for now because we can still tweet i think we can reclaim i you know i mean part of this is like a symptom of how uh twitter works where it's just like really easy to impersonate anyone um but you know we've got some ideas for how we can continue to combat the fishes i don't want to like you know let the fishers get a head start on on

our counter measures but it is a cat and mouse game and you know also you know we're getting uh some some excellent security thinkers of my crypto that'll that'll help us uh build out better you know response and uh defensive capabilities for our users so i'm stoked about that too uh also though you know just taylor since you bring up like i don't know like is the brand thrash like or is it the best pr it's like it's the word you can't say i i don't know i'm undecided on that it's like uh but yeah it's almost it's almost become

a joke and it's almost become like an inoculation where like everybody knows they're like oh you said the word and like if you're in on that joke then you're you're kind of like mentally inoculated against the tactic and and so i think there's something healthy going on in the in the community uh there well what's crazy is like so you guys have been at this for six years which is like an absolute like you are the adults of the space okay a lot of people coming in like myself included you know a little bit um are still toddlers you know and you guys are sort of the adults of this

space and uh metamask and my crypto as well they're no longer kind of you know can't be niche products right we're talking about some serious daily active users and dan i was curious like what are the latest metamask daily active users or maybe like monthly active users because i know we're going to be leaving these hands i don't know the dailies tell me the most oh actually i think so so uh sorry we crossed the big number and we didn't like celebrate it but we crossed the 30 million so we're like 32 million now

oh wow i didn't know there's a audience has mics um yeah there's a there's a tote there's an audience uh to the left of david that's just out of camera you can't see yeah they watch every show live talking plants yes yeah um and then daily active i think we're like eight or nine uh million uh something like that thirty million okay 9 million dailies 30 million monthly um that that's absolutely insane growth and and so like as as we turn uh and talk a little bit about you know the future of wallets i also just want to get us

grounded in in terms of your philosophy of how you think of a wallet and what you build next right and i'm wondering if there's some analogies from the past that we use here uh or what your analogy might be dan and taylor right it's like because there's kind of a question of is metamask going to turn into an ecosystem what is it going to be is it going to be sort of a is it like a browser are you like is metamask netscape is it like internet explorer is it an operating system is this like comparing it to netscape linux or windows

okay so like what is your analogy for this thing or is it a totally separate category something new uh we know it is like netscape in that it's the first place you send your friends you get in crypto like you go to coinbase whatever and then you want to do real crypto stuff you go get a metamask wallet so like what what's the analogy uh from your perspective maybe start with dan okay uh so i think that what we are is something like a distributed user agent

so user agent is the the word that you use for like when a computer is trusted to act on your behalf so your operating system you know you plug in a usb thing you're trusting the computer the operating system to keep you safe from whatever you just plugged in hopefully it's good at that the truth is you know most operating systems you install an app that kind of owns you right so they're kind of poor user agents they're working on it though browsers are another user agent like it's right there in the http headers is like you know it's like user agent string mozilla you know so uh browsers

are they're keeping you safe from things that you don't trust but both of those are these kinds of local user agents where you've got some stuff locally on your machine right here and it's controlling the permissions now browser you're loading some remote content and and you know you're beaming some info back and forth so you're getting more distributed but but then once we added crypto in now we've got this kind of agency this kind of like user decision making and computer power that is not on your computer anymore and

it's not on any one person's computer so it's not suitable for a password and so you need to be able to make these you need a process on your computer that's able to help you make informed uh decisions um for a distributed network um uh yeah basically that so it's kind of just like a operating system kernel or something it's like a permissions manager and uh you know i think a lot of people you know you think about it first as a wallet so you're like it's financial but i think we've already seen it it's way bigger than just finance you know it's

like people are inventing new i mean even if you're just talking about finance people are inventing new derivatives all the time but then they're also like voting on stuff and then they're also like selling art and then they're like you know making you know doubts based on it's like so so the the metaphor of just money it doesn't actually hold up for it at all it's it's way bigger than that it's way more general um so it's this kind of distributed authority dan i kind of feel like you're saying netscape like i would still use that one like i it's like i mean i mean it is also it's similar uh yeah

one difference is that we don't provide the window right so uh ideally your wallet can let you interact with applications from any host so you know you could you know you could sign into a native a desktop app using wallet connect today right and you can you can sign in on a uh yeah to a website um via mobile i think it's just a matter of time before we're doing like nfc login and stuff like that like i think that the operating system is bigger than a window it's like literally just like this fabric of digital agreements between us um

so so kind of but but it's like the permissions part of of netscape kind of and then just blow that out between all possible ways of interacting with other software i see what do you think taylor what would you add to that yeah i think that the reason it's really hard to like come up with a really sort of a one-to-one analogy is that uh one you you know the difference between the operating system and the browser historically is uh there isn't this like financial error to it and money does change things um the reason

that like uh there are so many scammers and so many people trying to steal your crypto is that uh it's it's money like crypto's money um and so that adds like a whole new layer um and then the biggest uh i guess realization that people are probably starting to understand more tangibly today with nfts and the like is um what the the sort of the things that we're interacting with they are uh anything like it's infinite

right so similar to how like i guess the browser can access this content or load up this content and that content can be anything um the you know what metamask is interacting with can also be anything um however it's it's much more uh it's not just content it's much more personal so you know you could be uh in the same way that right now like you go and you visit a dab and you send some uh you send some if somewhere or you put

it over a bridge or you lend it out or whatever it is um you're you're not only like uh giving this this thing control over your finances uh it's also you know with nfts it's it's not literally money it's these uh anything from like a jpeg or a collectible or a store value or whatever you want to say but it could also be like uh your identity uh it could be like uh uh your your like relationships or your