MetaMask, the highly popular wallet for Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, has finally released their mobile client. The announcement was made at DevCon 4 on October 31 by Joseph Lubin, the CEO and founder of New York-based Consensys, the company behind the MetaMask wallet.
Lubin also took his announcement to Twitter, sharing the highly anticipated and exciting news to the world.
The @metamask_io mobile app was just announced at #Devcon4! Everyone’s favorite #Ethereum browser extension is coming to your phone. The team is focusing on not being ‘just a wallet’, but a portal to the world of all things #blockchain. https://t.co/3bvQXuF8gV pic.twitter.com/vcaIkkzcVS
— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) October 31, 2018
The showcase and release of the MetaMask mobile client couldn’t have been announced at a better place as DevCon is the largest and most anticipated gathering for blockchain application and platform developers.
This year, the Ethereum-focused conference is being held in Prague, Czech Republic with a host of large conglomerates and cryptocurrency businesses. Big names such as Microsoft, ShapeShift, Santander, Blockfolio, and Wanxiang are attending the conference.
The MetaMask Mobile Wallet
MetaMask was first launched in 2016 by Consensys, the largest blockchain software firm in the world with over 1,000 developers. Since the wallet’s launch, MetaMask has quickly become the go-to wallet for Ethereum and ERC-20 token holders.
The wallet is not only capable of the seamless storing and transacting of ETH and tokens, it is also capable of handling various decentralized application (dapp) requests as well.
Users came to love MetaMask, but longed for a mobile client of the wallet as it was only available through a browser extension on various desktop web browsers.
Many crypto users prefer using mobile wallets, due to the security advantages it offers over web-based wallets. According to Joel Snyder, a senior IT consultant and contributor to Samsung Insights, the presence of a trusted execution environment (TEE) in smart phones allows data to be stored without reach from hackers:
This is why smartphones have an edge over laptops and desktops for cryptocurrency wallets: without the benefits of the hardware-based TEE, the keys are more vulnerable. There is a significant caveat: a naïve wallet developer might choose to simply store the keys on the normal internal storage of the phone, in which case there’s little additional protection from using the smartphone platform.
To ensure the highest level of security, the newly-released MetaMask mobile client wallet is a non-custodial wallet that provides users with full control over their funds.
The private keys are not stored on the mobile device, and thus are not vulnerable to hackers. This means that users are solely responsible for their private keys and should store them responsibly in an offline environment.
More Than Just a Wallet
As mentioned above, the MetaMask desktop wallet is capable of handling decentralized application (dapp) requests, in addition to regular wallet functions of storing, sending and receiving crypto.
Now, with the release of the MetaMask mobile client wallet, this dapp functionality has been brought to the next level with the availability of a dapp browser or a “Google Play Store for dapps.”
MetaMask mobile can be used to run various dapps such as the popular Ethereum-based dapp, Cryptokitties. It will be able to connect to the dapp and effortlessly process information on the Ethereum mainnet.
With this newly-added “dapp browser or store” feature, a variety of dapps will become more easily accessible to Ethereum users than ever before.
