MetaMask Monthly: January, 2021

As we poured one out for 2020 and gave it the old boot, we head into the new year shiny, clean and full of hope for the future. For the citizens of Web 3.0, the future has never been brighter and our team continues to be inspired by our mission to open up this universe to more people, and bring the benefits of the decentralized web to all.

This month, we made important improvements to our UI on desktop and mobile to provide a more transparent and seamless user experience, poured more resources into simplifying Swaps for new users, incorporated community feedback into our feature roadmap — and so much more.

New to Swapping Tokens?

Get up to speed in 60 seconds with this quick explainer. Watch, grok, then jump into MetaMask and start swapping with confidence!

Still need help? Hit up our FAQs or connect with the team on Discord.

Be the First to Know When Swaps Goes Mobile

To give back to our users and dapp integrators, we like to give the MetaMask community and developers a heads-up on what’s coming before anybody else. To get product communications and platform updates before the rest of the industry, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.In case you missed it, here’s what happened in the MetaVerse this month:

Improved gas estimations

The new gas fee defaults should improve transaction success rate, while ensuring you are not overpaying.

MetaMask v8 now supporting latest Trezor firmware

We’re super excited to announce that MetaMask now supports the latest Trezor firmware, which will allow Trezor users to enter their passwords on the device, instead of on their computers.

Breaking API Changes

As of version 9.0.0 of the extension, and 1.0.9 of mobile, MetaMask stopped injecting window.web3 and made a limited number of breaking changes to our window.ethereum API. Due to a lengthy deprecation period and an intensive developer relations effort, we were able to make these changes with minimal disruption to our users. If you’re a dapp developer looking for a detailed breakdown of these changes, check out our documentation.

Custom Network Network Security Fixes

Recently, we discovered a security vulnerability related to how chain IDs were handled for custom networks. Now that we’ve fixed it on both the extension (as of version 8.1.0) and mobile (as of version 1.0.10), we have disclosed the nature of the vulnerability. Make sure to update to the latest version of MetaMask on all your devices to receive the fix.

Updated UI for Swaps Quote Screen

Previously, in the case when approval was required on the Swaps quote screen, or when the user was served with a ‘price difference’ warning, in popup view, they had to scroll down below the fold to view fee information:

Thanks to new new design tweaks to the quotes screen, users can now view all critical Swap information, including amount required to complete the swap and fee information, without having to scroll down:

This little change ensures a better, more transparent experience for swappers by ensuring these users have access to all the information required to make their swap decision, in a single view.

Improved Translations

A number of foxy community members helpfully alerted us to some translation updates to make using MetaMask clearer and easier for users in Taiwan, China and France. A big shout out to andy0130tw, yahsinhuangtw, and wanshan1024 for making these suggestions and helping us think a little more globally.

Feedback is a gift — and we’ll be using it to shape our Mobile roadmap!

In December we conducted a survey, via an in-app notification to give MetaMask Mobile users the opportunity to understand how satisfied you are with the products and where we can improve. You scored us very well, giving us confidence that we’re serving MetaMask users right on mobile, but there is always room to improve. A big thank you to the survey participants for giving us detailed feedback about what can be improved and what we could be building for the community. We heard you and we’ll be incorporating many of these suggestions into our roadmap.

Bug Fixes: Android injection, App crash during KYC

When navigating to dapps from our homepage tabs on the Android app, some dapps wouldn’t prompt the user to connect via MetaMask.

The prompt would only occur if the page was reloaded, or if the user came to the site via a bookmark or deep-link. We’ve since pushed a fix for this issue — big thanks to several community members for reporting it!

There was an issue that made the app crash when people tried uploading their files (typically during KYC process of purchasing ETH via Transak). This should be resolved in v1.0.10.

Making it easier for mobile users to import their seed phrase

Thanks to a recent update, you can now easily import an account using your seed phrase without having to match the exact spacing between words in your phrase.

As long as you insert your phrase, with all words in the correct order, you’ll be able to import your accounts. It’s a little change that removes a lot of friction from the importing process for MetaMask Mobile users.

Join the MetaMask Team

We’re hiring JavaScript (and TypeScript!) engineers to help us build secure, delightful, and extensible software that makes the decentralized web accessible for everyone.

Explore our open roles and apply here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/consensys/jobs/2572388

Developers, Developers, Developers

Be the first to know about new MetaMask snaps and developer tools as they evolve — and help shape them through user research! Sign up to our Dev Updates list here.

Keep on exploring! Remember, if you ever need a little help, head to our Community Support Channel or jump into the MetaMask Discord to connect with the team.