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🦊 Should you stop using Metamask?

🦊 Should you stop using Metamask?

PLUS: timeline for bitcoin ETF

Alex M.
August 09, 2023

GM everyone. This is 2036, the crypto newsletter that pays you.

Here’s what we’re serving up today 🍲: Metamask has served us well over the last few years. But a new contender has entered the game. Is it time to switch wallets?

Let’s dig in.

🥔 Today’s meat and potatoes

Get smarter on crypto in 2 minutes

Metamask is the most popular crypto wallet used to interact with the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethereum, in turn, is home to the biggest DeFi protocols, most valuable NFTs, biggest DAOs and most popular decentralized applications.

This has made Metamask the world’s most popular non-exchange crypto wallet (∼30 million users) and the de facto gateway to DeFi, NFTs, crypto games, etc.

If you’ve ever interacted with crypto, you likely have a Metamask wallet.

But Metamask has a number of problems.

For example, Metamask doesn't:

Aggregate the value of all your assets in one place (you have to use a tool like Debank to see it)
Automatically connect to new chains (you need to manually fill in a bunch of relatively complex fields to access some blockchains)
Integrate security features to prevent you from signing shady transactions (even crypto OGs lose millions on this every year)

To fill these gaps, a new player has appeared. We tried it out - and honestly, it’s pretty awesome.

[Caveat: this is NOT a paid promotion. We have no agenda except to bring you the best of crypto because it’ll make you money/make your life more awesome. When we have sponsors, we’ll disclose them.

Until then, we fly solo like Han Solo.]

Rabby is a new wallet we’ve been playing around with.

It’s a Chrome extension - just like Metamask… but at first glance, better.

Here are 3 things that stand out:

1/ Portfolio management

When you open the wallet, you immediately get an overview of the value of your assets in each of your wallets, along with quick actions you can take:

Next, you don’t have to manually add each blockchain you have assets on or want to interact with. They’re automatically all there already (Rabby connects to 66 blockchains).

Beautiful.

2/ In-app trading

If you want to trade the crypto in your wallet, you can do it directly within the Chrome extension:

Rabby connects to the biggest decentralized exchanges and finds the best rates for you:

… and you know exactly what you’re getting out of it:

3/ Security

When you connect to a website that seems fishy, Rabby lets you know:

This alone is amazing. In the past, we've talked about the importance of Metamask add-ons to avoid losing all your money. Now, it’s integrated natively into the app 👏

To be fair, we could go on. Rabby also caters to more active degens, for example, with the ability to top up gas with another token or revoke contracts.

But even for the average user, Rabby - at first glance - is a great product.

So here’s our verdict:

We love Metamask. But Rabby is just better - for now.

Metamask is building a new product suite that fills some of these gaps (you can try them here).

And if Metamask crushes them, Rabby could fade into oblivion.

But we’re going to start using Rabby instead of Metamask for the time being.

And that’s what we’ll also pay you to do today.