How to use MetaMask like a Pro
Introduction
I understand, MetaMask is like rocket science to a lot of newbies and even people that have been on the crypto space for a while.
I won’t lie, i had a hard time grasping the concepts of using MetaMask, but its all clear to me now and all i can say is that, it’s a very valuable and important App to use if you are currently active on the crypto and web3 space.
Without further Ado, i will be jumping in on how to use MetaMask from start to finish.
At the end of this tutorial, you should be able to know how to use MetaMask like a pro.
Setting up our Wallet
If you are a newbie and you haven’t created a crypto wallet before, i would advise you to head over to your App store or Play store and download trust wallet instead.
it’s much more easier to navigate than MetaMask.
Download trust wallet, save your 12 secret phrase somewhere safe and once you are done setting up your wallet, you can come back to this short tutorial.
For users that have already been on the crypto space, download MetaMask from App store or Play store and setup your wallet.
Kindly note that you can click on Import Wallet using recovery phrase and paste your trust wallet 12 phrase there and setup any password of your choice and use that to access your MetaMask App instead of creating a new wallet and getting brand new seed phrases.
You can create a new wallet on MetaMask if you like, and get new seed phrases, both methods should take you to the interface below;
MetaMask wallet is an EVM compatible wallet. EVM means Ethereum virtual machine, that means it supports Ethereum based wallets and all other networks or blockchains that are built under the EVM.
That’s why when you set it up for the first time, you are going to see “Ethereum main network” at the top of the wallet.
But there’s a catch, that doesn’t mean MetaMask can only work with Ethereum based tokens or sites. You can add the Binance Smartchain network to your MetaMask wallet and use it too.
I will be teaching you that later, for now, let’s move on to creating new wallets on MetaMask.
Creating Multiple Wallets
Creating multiple wallets on your MetaMask is very important.
That way you have a burner wallet or an airdrop wallet or anything you want to call it.
Having numerous wallets is very important in your crypto journey.
The advantage of using MetaMask for multiple wallets is that, you don’t get to have seed phrases for all the multiple wallets you create, all you need is just a private key.
Let’s proceed to create our second wallet on MetaMask and we are going to rename it as Airdrop Wallet.
Step one, click on the hamburger icon at the top left corner of your App:
Step two, Click on Main Wallet 1:
Step three, Click on Create a new account:
An account will automatically be added to your list of wallet and you should now be seeing two accounts on your MetaMask and the second one should be Account 2.
You can click on it and it will take you to the main interface of your MetaMask
The next thing we should be doing is to get the Private Key of your newly created account which is “Account 2”.
So as usual, click on the hamburger icon like we did previously and click on settings;
Then click on Security & Privacy;
Then scroll down, and on the “Show private key for Account 2” section, click on Show private key and you enter your password and it should display it.
Copy your private key and store it somewhere safe. Perhaps on your mail or Google Drive
You can decide to do some experiment though.
Scroll up and click on Reveal Secret Recovery phrase and enter your password and see if the phrase of Account 2 is the same as Account 1.
You’ll see that it is actually the same.
But if you were to go back and select Account 1 or your Main Wallet and if you check the private key of your Account 1, you will see that the private key is different from that of Account 2. This little experiment proved that I was right when I said multiple wallets on MetaMask have the same phrases but different private keys.
That means you should backup your private keys of all your MetaMask wallets and do not assume that if you uninstall and install and use your recovery phrase, you will automatically see all your wallets that you created. That is false, you will only see one wallet and that is the first wallet that you imported. The rest will be gone for life, even if there are funds in it, it will be forever lost and it can never be recovered.
You can try to create more wallets yourself.
I don’t think there is limit to the number of wallets you can import in your MetaMask.
Now let’s select Account 2 and go and rename our wallet to Airdrop Wallet so you can be able to identify them and know what they are for.
Once you are at the homepage of Account 2, long press Account 2 and it should highlight, then click on the backspace to erase it and type Airdrop Wallet or whatever name you want to give it.
To remove an imported Account, select the account and long press it and you should see the option to remove it;
So that’s all for now on how to setup multiple wallets on your MetaMask.
Up next, we are going to explore the Dapps or Browser function and how to switch between networks on MetaMask.
Dapps and Networks
This is a very tricky task, so pay close attention.
On your MetaMask App, you should see browser beneath your App, Click on Browser and it should take you to a browser interface.
Also note that when they say Dapps on MetaMask, it means your browser on MetaMask.
A lot of people are fond of pasting web3 links on their safari or chrome browser instead of pasting the links on their inbuilt MetaMask browser, that is why they are mostly confused during tasks that require them to paste a certain link on their Dapps browser.
Now we will be using the Dapps browser to Add the Binance Smartchain network to our MetaMask.
Let’s say we want to do a presale on the BSC network, and you were asked to paste the pinksale website to your Dapps browser and buy into the presale using BNB.
You know we can’t currently do that because we are still on the Ethereum network, if we were to paste the pinksale link to the browser, we wouldn’t be able to buy in into the presale, because the presale is on the BSC network and not the Ethereum network.
So type chainlist.org to the search field and load it.
Scroll down and search for Binance and you should see it pop up beneath, then click on Add to MetaMask
Then click on Switch Network and your Ethereum main Wallet at the top of your MetaMask homepage should have automatically switched to BNB Smartchain
As you can see above, Ethereum had changed to BNB Smart Chain.
Now we can paste our pinksale link on the Dapps browser and load it and buy into the presale using our BNB.
But of course, we have $0 worth of BNB currently, so you can deposit BNB into your wallet by clicking on your wallet address on your homepage and sending BNB from any centralized exchange or via a vendor.
Of course, your BNB Smart Chain address is still the same as that of your Ethereum Address. This is basic crypto 101.
All EVM compatible chains have the same wallet addresses. Let’s switch to polygon matic network and I will show you what I mean.
We will be switching to polygon matic via another method, we won’t be using chainlist.org this time around.
On your MetaMask homepage, click on BNB Smart Chain at the top and you should see Polygon Mainnet and other networks.
Click on Polygon Mainnet and you will see that it also has the same wallet address as that of BNB Smart Chain and Ethereum.
Try and add other listed networks on your MetaMask and you will see that they all have the same wallet addresses.
Most of the time, you will be using chainlist.org to add networks to your MetaMask because not all the networks are present on the MetaMask homepage, only a few are there, unlike using chainlist.org.
There are also some instances whereby the network you want to add won’t be on chainlist.org, instead you will have to add it manually to your MetaMask.
So click on Polygon Mainnet at the top and click on Add a Network
Next, Click on Custom Network;
Now you can see the blank input fields.
The RPC of the network you want to add will be given to you and you can input them on the input field accordingly and click on Add and it will add.
Let’s experiment by adding PulseChain RPC.
Use the following Details below to add PulseChain RPC to your MetaMask.
Network Name:
PulseChain
New RPC URL:
https://rpc.pulsechain.com
Chain ID:
369
Currency Symbol:
PLS
Block Explorer:
https://otter.pulsechain.com
Once you Add it, your MetaMask should automatically switch to pulsechain network.
Now you understand the concept of MetaMask.
It’s more stressful than trust wallet, but it supports more networks than trust wallet.
Before pulse chain is being integrated with trust wallet, it will first be available on MetaMask before trust wallet.
So what happens when you cannot use MetaMask?
Will you wait for the PulseChain team to integrate it with trust wallet before you start interacting with pulsechain?
So why not learn how to use MetaMask and be ahead other users and be early.
So now we have explored almost every important feature on MetaMask.
If you want to use Pancakeswap or poocoin or any BSC network related DEX, switch to BNB Smart chain network first and proceed to paste the links on the Dapps or browser so you can access it.
If you wish to use uniswap or 1inch or any Ethereum based DEX, switch to Ethereum network and paste the link you want to use to your Dapps and start interacting. Vice versa for every other networks and their DEX’s.
On your MetaMask homepage, you can see the import tokens option too, use that to import the contract address of any token that you buy on MetaMask.
Just like how you import on trust wallet, you can also import on MetaMask easily.
Just click on import token and click on custom token and paste the contract address and it should auto fill automatically.
This brings us to the end of MetaMask masterclass.
Explore the remaining features yourself and you can reach out to me on WhatsApp on
or on telegram at
or you can join my telegram channel for more info and crypto updates on
