# Evolving the Ecosystem & a Metamask Roadmap  (Devcon4)

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2019-10-09
- Duration: 31:02
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-R022IFMJ-yQ
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R022IFMJ-yQ

## Description

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https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/4/evolving-the-ecosystem-and-a-metamask-roadmap

The maturation of dApps has progressed significantly compared to two years ago, especially in being mobile-ready and end-user friendly. MetaMask has a story to tell about this progression first-hand and the new challenges that 2018 brings us. In this presentation we will alert the community about upcoming features from MetaMask such as IPFS support, signed type data, our new web3 injection model, MetaMask-as-a-light-client, mobile support, and multi-chain support. We will also take a critical look at how different actors are attempting to improve on the bridge between users and dApps that is the Ethereum browser.

Speaker(s): Bobby Dresser, Bruno Barbieri, Kevin Serrano, Jenny Pollack
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: UX & Design
Keywords: metamask, ecosystem

Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 4 was held in Prague, Czech Republic on Oct 30 - Nov 2, 2018.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

## Transcript

[Applause] everyone thank you so much for coming my name is Bobby from the meta mask team got Jenny and Bruno backstage with me and we are very excited to be here today in the next 25 minutes we're gonna tell you a little bit about what we've been working on for the past year some of the principles that guide our development and what you can expect to see over the course of the next year no dinosaur is nothing fancy just a couple projects that were very excited about so let's start with some numbers since our teammates last took this stage in Cancun we've shipped 46 versions of meta masks made up of almost 900 pull requests from over a hundred individual contributors now that last number is really really exciting for us we are thankful every day for the support enthusiasm feedback and patience of this community so seriously thank you yeah you can applaud for yourselves that's cool with me cool the team has almost doubled in size we've gone from 10 full-time Fox's to 18 we've made room for a support team to handle this huge influx of user requests and we now contain a small research development team called meta mask labs which Jenny will talk about in just a moment we span 10 time zones and I'm sure some of you are familiar with the pros and the cons of that we think it's a very important ingredient one important ingredient and building a product that works for a variety of people so let's talk about what we've built meta mask aims to make the decentralized web usable and a huge part of that is making sure developers have tools to build better and better applications but we also have a big responsibility for the end user and for the end user we're thinking a lot about user experience security and education now these three are not really separable right you have to be safe in order to have a basic good experience often times not always but often the more you know the safer you are and we think a good UX should help educate the user so their expectations are met and their experience is smooth now there are certainly projects out there that we're super keen on that will totally shift the paradigm in some of these areas right if users didn't have to be educated about gas we would save a lot of time and energy and design iterations but we also recognize the need to deliver incremental progress today so many of our user facing features from the past year can be placed somewhere around this continuum there's some stuff that's not up here our progress towards 100% test coverage our migration to typescript but a lot of our user facing features again help promote something either directly or indirectly on this continuum so I'd like to highlight a couple of those that are probably particularly relevant to some of you out there and hopefully you learn something so as many of you might know meta mask now supports treasure and ledger hardware wallets you can you can applaud for tri-zone measure for sure thank you you can plug the device right into your computer and sign messages and transactions without your keys ever leaving the device this basically means that any DAP that supports meta mask gets Hardware support right out of the box we have Bruner to thank for this wonderful change you can thank him in a second when it comes on the next project I'd like to highlight is VIP 1102 this is super super exciting the way most web 3 browsers work today is by exposing the etherion provider to every site you visit which means your addresses are exposed to every site you visit no matter whether that site is even trying to access the web 3 object or not this is pretty smooth and sip this makes things simple for developers obviously but it is a pretty terrible privacy experience for the end user it's very easy to imagine how this could be used to fingerprint or track or fish unsuspecting users across the web so EIP 11:02 defines a new standard where rather than expecting these addresses to be exposed by default the DAP has to request access to them using a new provider method aetherium enable when the user can sense probably on a UI similar to the we see up here the promise will resolve with the users address clients like meta masks will also perhaps cache or allow the user to let the adapt sort of continue having access to their address in which case the promise will resolve immediately so we think this is the best balance between developer experience onboarding UX and privacy protections for our users a huge shout-out to the teams at status and missed further early support with this proposal shout out to everyone in the community who gave us really valuable feedback and helped us create the version that it is today and massive massive props to Paul Bhushan you might know him as bit pusher for his tireless work making sure people have what they need to implement this change answering questions staying receptive to feedback this will be rolling out as an opt-in feature in meta masks for users starting on Monday so if you haven't taken note of this take note there's a really succinct guide on our medium account so check it out or come chat with us after the after the show cool next up this one's simple so meta mask supports the recently merged sign type data spec we're very excited to finally settle on one signing method that we think is human readable and cheap to verify on chain Ben back and forth on a lot of different ways to do this for a long time and this is the signing method that we will encourage all developers to use when they need their users to sign a piece of data it's also the UI that we will continue to test and iterate so that we can kind of hone in on the best way to present this interaction to folks out there and then last I want to mention VIP 747 which defines a watch asset method we know that many of our users care a lot about tokens and not many of our users really understand that their tokens are tracts not necessarily inherently to their address but on a contract so rather than relying on a centralized token list so that we can Auto detect tokens and rather than forcing users to manually add these tokens themselves VIP 747 proposes a watch asset method that let's adapt suggest an asset to the users wallet to track so for example I could go to an exchange purchase a token and the Matt exchange could suggest it could call watch asset and suggest it to meta mask that I'd track this token I'd probably see a modal like this I'd click Add token and it would be permanently added to my meta mask we're super excited about this one because theoretically we could use it for other asset types going forward like subscriptions or even use it to suggest say watching a contract account that the user might not watch it so there's a lot of potential for this huge shadow to estaban me know a new member of our team and Dan Finley for their work on this proposal so yeah a little bit of a blitz through some of those projects but I hope this was informative worth your time and I would like to now turn it over to Jenny to give you a sneak peek of some of the projects you can expect to see in the coming year thank you thank you thanks Bobby hi I'm Jenny I'm a developer at madame masque and i'm currently here to share with you some of the projects were working on including optin metrics contract account support late client developments multi network integration and layer to scaling research plans first up is meta metrics meta mask is getting smarter we've gotten feedback from developers about the pain points and meta masks onboarding so we know we can do better but with over a million installs how do we cater to users who aren't opening github issues how do we run an operation without overwhelming our support team and how do we understand our users better while being committed to privacy we're building reporting in the UI for user acquisition activity and retention which will be opted in and off by default we will not collect any personally identifiable information addresses keys transactions or balances we think this work will help us build better tools for our users which is what we love to do next up is contract accounts I'm currently working on providing support for contracts as accounts in meadow mask starting with the No safe you're probably familiar with the original gnosis multi-sig the safe is an evolution of that project with cheaper setup transaction costs and extensible modules you can learn more about the safe at other talks from the gnosis team today and Friday during DEFCON I'm really excited to be building alongside the next generation of tools which will allow for features such as social recovery key allowances state channels multi-factor off and batch transactions this is really only the beginning and eventually we're planning on supporting generic identity accounts with similar to the pattern described in the IP 747 that Bobbi mentioned mystic Allah meta mask is decentralizing madam asked Labs is working on a project in our R&D department called meta mask labs and the project is called Musa kala which is a native browser p2p light client to decrease our reliance on centralized infrastructure Frank and dima from metal mask labs will be presenting mu ste kala on November 2nd at 2:30 on the prism side stage and we encourage you to attend this talk if you're curious to learn more about their amazing progress and what it takes to build a browser first light client I've watched her talk a few times I promise it's really good next up is multi network integration madam asked is spreading thanks to community input meta mask is moving to support multiple eath compatible block chains and this is only the beginning our end goal is for allow madam asked to allow users to simultaneously connect to their own sets of networks and to allow developers to suggest new networks to the user and next up we have our layer to scaling research plans meta mask is scaling doctor dr. Vincent Eli has recently begun work on a research project in meadow mask to assess how to best support and integrate various layer 2 apps and protocols the aim is to be agnostic to implementation while providing a complete and secure integration into the met user experience the project is exploring two main paths first full integration and operation of payment channels for instantly are see 20 payments and second a more general specification that will allow devs to create layer 2 apps that can be integrated into Madame masque so thank you for having me and now here's Bruno with one more thing hello everyone my name is Bruno I'm also a yellow parameter mask and I'm very excited to be here not just because that gun which is awesome but also because I have very exciting news for you first of all let me give you guys some context as you know madam us is one of the oldest and most popular dream wallets I was launched in 2015 created by Aaron Davis also known as novice along with Dan Finley and we passed 1 million users since then we learn a lot about what it takes to create a digital wallet in this fast changing space where you know it's constantly evolving but there is one thing that the enchain and it still is we are still a browser extension so that means that we are somehow you know restricted by the browser api's so we start thinking about our future and the first question was like do we want to be just a wallet so we say that that's not the right thing I mean we want to be bridge to the decentralized way so this is why we decided to create our mobile apps so let's talk about the challenges first of all we are aware that we're late to the game there are other more bullets in this pace that there are somehow similar there are pretty cool too similar we also know that mobile sorry onboarding is still a problem there is a lot of friction there especially for new users we know that we because we want to help the space grow we need to learn new users explore the ecosystem of the apps but at the same time we have like a big user base so we need to make sure that there is a an easy onboarding process for the for you guys so when I said that there is you know a lot of problem with UX friction just imagine your ankle health reading any of this here's your 12 verse mnemonic social problem amazing can fall supreme enemy paper amateur picture a sister wink you need to back up your seal phrase make sure you know you don't lose your private key here is your pride poly key like what this is bad and we gotta fix it so this is where our UX research team came to rescue our product liberal designer Christian Sharia along with Melissa short they have been working really hard over the past few months talking to users gathering feedback and trying different prototypes to see how they feel and we finally end up finding a flow that works pretty good our users like it and we like it too so we are very happy about that and let me show you how it looks so if you see on the first screen that's like our home screen for the app and we have two options the first one is to start flowing now which is what a new user should use and then importer wallet for existing users there is only one thing that needs to happen for new users they need to tap that and then they should be able to access the entire all the updates that are available there and then after that they should be able to start using it out and that's it so we're going to handle all the creation of the accounts and all their heavy stuff in the background and just let's think about cryptokeys for example for critter kiddies you just like go to the dap and then you can sign up by signing a message you don't need either for that once you're in you are able to start browsing the different collectibles right and you might even find one that you like so now you have a motivation to actually pass to the next stage which is add funds to your wallet so at that time we're going to ask you to have to create a password and the security of your account it will increase as long as you know your account starts holding more value but it doesn't make sense to make you deal with all this stuff before you are you know able to see what's going on inside the app ecosystem so you know we really hope that this new flow is going to help bring more people to space and not try to scare them with all the stuff that I mentioned earlier but what about existing users you guys might be wondering what this perience is gonna you know look for you I show you some mock-ups about what we did for you know new users but I'm gonna show you what we build for you so as you can see on the right you have the manimals extension on the left you have the new mobile app I'm gonna show you what happens when you tap on import wallet so you get the instructions there it's open extension go to settings click on sync with moil and then you scan the QR code enter your password first generates a QR code and now you scan the QR code right now the syncing is happening the app is parsing all your account information and after a few seconds boom you're all set that's it if you look now you have your same account on the extension and on the app you will also see what happens to the transactions we are importing your entire transaction history to your phone and also not just the transactions but also you know all the information related to in transaction like hash gas usage and all the stuff so you have your account your balance your transactions but what happens when you have more than one account so now you will see on the Moya lab that we are also exporting all your accounts if you compare the accounts on the more lap with accounts on the extension there are the same they have the same names so basically we're porting your entire desktop experience into your phone in about 15 seconds so just to recap this is the kind of like flow that we're going for new users they go straight to that existing users you can import your wallet using your citrus or you can use the model sync feature that I just show you one important thing if you look at how we you know that the diagram looks like you have the wallet as a side thing right it's even important module of the app it's necessary that we want to have our that we want to make the core of the app the browser experience so that's something to you know think about it when you compare it with the existing options that you have one last thing I want to show you do you guys remember I said we want to be we we just don't want to be a wallet but we want to be a bridge to the decentralized web so this picture that I'm gonna show you it's all about that in my opinion it's a very important step there's some more decentralized way so let's check it out if you see that's a website I'm loading on the emitter I'm a small app but actually that's not a normal website if you look at the URL you will see that it ends on dot eath okay that's because it's an e NS name from the etherium name service which is really cool that what happens with the hosting this is not like a normal web site that's hosting a regular web server I think you guys heard about ipfs before right so this is where this website is looking right now it's free and decent relize so if you are still confused about what's going on let me explain you we're basically supporting allowing you to browse ipfs cross websites through ENS names so for example the name that you see there if you sold to the ipfs Content ID that's below which is also known as the ID FS hash and before that you were able to access that same content using the IP FS gateway URL if you look at the first link you'll see says ipfs io / IP FS and then there is a net via the cache and the file name if you tap there now you will see there is a file there ok with the old-style URL now you're gonna see that if I tap on the second link you're gonna see the same excel file but we are going to accessor 8 through a human readable name so you don't have to remember anymore ipfs gateway urls or ipfs call air hashes okay so you guys should go post your own decent revised ab and trace a quick tutorial if you want to take a look about how this works and one thing i would like to add is we're going to add a list of available gateways if one of the gig which goes down we will follow up to a newer one and you can also set your own ipfs gateway so that's pretty cool you have options so that's it for oil we're gonna launch our public beta early next year for Android and iOS and before you guys ask it's gonna be open source also we are hiring so if you guys feel like you fight with any of these roles please shoot us an email or reach out to any of us we're gonna still be around for the rest of the conference and the very last thing we will love your feedback so if you guys have some time please scan this QR code and take this quick survey that is going to help up it help us build better products but in exchange of that we're going to choose lucky winners and we're going to let you pick any item from our new swag store swag does Madame s dot IO and that's it thank you I don't know if anyone has any questions or should we take questions yeah we've got a couple minutes for questions if people want we've got a hand over there you got a question are you waving I think there's a mic down front if you want to come go back can't oh hi Dimitri the spell of gnosis does Madame ask plans to move from extension to like from being a browser extension to more to bigger platform like an electron or or chromium to have it like a full feature control over the content of the user totally we have discussed in the past bringing madam asked to electron as an electro nap it's definitely still an impossibility we're not sure that it will make more people use metamath necessarily or bring us closer to serving gaps better but it is still yeah it's it's a possibility if you haven't ruled it out for sure it's not necessarily on this list of stuff that we described today but it could happen at some point and so if that's something you're interested in I mean we engage with a lot of this sort of stuff on github so open an issue there is one already I think so find it give us your thoughts we'd love to have the discussion hi I'm willing to represent squishy of LA token we are top 30 a cryptic exchange and security the token trading leader do you have any plans to integrate with decentralized exchanges so we're launching high dps decentralized exchange where people can sign on orders send them in to order books and this transaction will be written into smart contract and they need to sign their order with something like metal mask so any plans to integrate with Dex integrate by pulling them into the meta mask UI is that what you mean yeah so you can send sign orders from meta masks and send them to our main engine totally so we have a very bare-bones integration with shape shift that's been live in madam asked for a year and a half and our metrics at this point are very very young and immature but we do know that fewer than a hundred people have ever used that shapeshift integration which is pretty pretty low so I think that would prop we could probably build some it would be a wonderful experience but in terms of the whole range of like critical stuff there is to do out there that hasn't you know risen to the to the top of the list but I will say the same thing to you that said to the previous gentleman which is we pay a lot of attention to what people in the community seem to be enthusiastic about so engage us again on github open an issue start the discussion and we'll see what happens up my recommendation for that is so to make sure that your product or exchange or whatever is more friendly and it's gonna work fine a mohel app so you know if you do a good job people naturally go and use it through the madam of mobile app or any other option hello I've been using signature schemes for a long time and a IP cement relatives are very good thing for our users to be able to sign complex message in a clear way thanks to youth from it amassed or providing this because web 3gs doesn't provide an interface based in nature so good job except your complainant with trace or nature but Twitter and ledger are not able to do this kind of signature right now so when we have the full user experience 712 signature we've ledger great question I'm hoping that by asking that question we will encourage treasure and ledger to help their hardware wallets support scientist at v3 I don't know if runo's anything cloud yeah there are open issues on dresser and ledger repos about that you know it's out of our control but just about their issues and at some point is gonna happen I think there I'm pretty sure they're the stuff is open source to so if anyone you know has the time and the will to do it you can country thank you for asking hi guys Everett um from the mist project Congrats on your progress is really amazing do you have plans to add IPF as routing to the backstop experience as well I heard that man so we do have a a pretty rudimentary ipfs resolution or at least ENS domain name resolution in the browser extension it's not quite as full featured as what Brunner just showed in mobile I don't think it actually so yeah so basically the main difference between what we have on this station right now and what we have moil is that because browser restrictions on the extension we can we can know we can you know change the URL right so we cannot mask that so you will still we will do a redirect and you will see you the IPF sio URL in the mold rouser the more lab we have way more control of that that's what we are able to do yeah thank you hi this is more with Fein my question is I love the new UX flow you introduced with the mobile app where you what user doesn't need to create a password up until they interact do you plan on doing the same thing for the Chrome extension as well the same flow I think there is a different approach between mobile and desktop and the main reason is that people are ready in a browser right so they can make it to the apps just fine and then the app will handle you know their functionality in one way or another right but in a mobile browser you usually put all the thing that process at the very beginning right so that's that's why we feel like it's necessary to push all the friction to the right time and not earlier that doesn't mean difference between both platforms that said I think we have a lot that we could do with the desktop onboarding experience and I hope that some of the opt-in metrics that Jenny mentioned will help us understand exactly where to improve and I don't think that our team is like opposed to trying some dramatic stuff like what Bruno demonstrated with the with the mobile app maybe one more can I ask two questions sure one more present yeah efficient one is that as I know it's mainly four years 20 right now right so mainly for years the 20 right now so we know integrate like a US or piece age for other public chain I don't know that it's mainly for ERC 20 I think like a lot of people use it for signing general eath transactions or interacting with taps that don't involve tokens at all we've got 721 support collectable support coming down the line and we're pretty much ready ready for that the second for the question was so it's for other blockchains yeah or other blockchain whether you have them yes so we are offering the ability to support any eath our pc compatibl chain as of this week so you can check that out in our next release yeah another question that I notice you guys recruit new position but all relevant to tech background so is that your strategy is mainly to do the best attack and don't do promotions like business development or marketing so proactively we are sort of the students we're sort of like blessed to have a very charismatic Fox and that he takes care of a lot of the marketing for us business development sort of a responsibility shared by the team there's a bunch of friendly team members to do a pretty solid job of maintaining relationships with other folks so we aren't looking for those roles yet but we probably will as the team matures okay shout out to chase known for setting up the store yeah and one more plug for this seriously we would love your feedback like I know this mic that gets passed around doesn't make it to everyone you when it can win a hoodie or whatever but seriously we love your feedback so scan away or don't and we'll be following around with conference with printed out versions you can scan - thank you for coming thank you guys