30 ms·

MetaMask now has over 8M users

46 points by omarfarooq 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago
I guess a lot of people want to spend $200 in gas fees to buy a URL to a JPEG that comes with no rights whatsoever to the image itself. What a time to be alive. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the Fed's loose monetary policy has gone too far after all haha.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  I think the main point is that people are happy to do so cause they can sell that JPEG for more later on The gas problem is well known and it has been addressed with the London upgrade
  - Danieru 5y ago
    > The gas problem is well known and it has been addressed with the London upgrade Gas prices are up. London only made the prices more predictable; high and predictable. "prices go high and low" is not a problems who's solution is "keep it high all the time". The actual promised solution to high gas prices is sharing. Which got delayed behind proof of stake backed validation. Aka: delayed until other long delayed feature is shipped.
    - ausudhz 5y ago
      Yes that was my point, it was the main change for eth 2.0 but it still has a long way to go. I guess other chain that use an utility token and main token have a better control over the transaction fee as compared as eth.
- mattbeckman 5y ago
  BAYC gave rights to NFT owners, and that's why they became the example. Larva Labs / Punks is doing it wrong IMO.
- dheera 5y ago
  I tried to sell some AI-generated cat pictures and it didn't work. Nobody wanted to pay for it. I think some element of it is a famous person doing it, so the spending is associated with the person, not the URL to the art. Which basically means, if you're famous, you can get some free money from idiots.
  - kaustavha 5y ago
    You need to create customers and wide appeal first. Cryptopunks were free at the start, so were cryptokitties. Lootproject just launched and anyone could mint a free loot bag and the floor is now 10 ETH. Beeple NFTs were dirt cheap. Pixel portraits were dirt cheap. Maybe you set your price too high and didnt do a good job of marketing? Learn about the space before you try to make a quick cash grab?
    - dheera 5y ago
      Oh I just figured it was designed to be a free cash grab, I set the price pretty low actually. Not really interested in learning how to market vaporware but if idiots want to pay me for nothing I'll take it
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        You got downvoted because in order to win the money, you have to play the game. You can't be openly cynical. Keep that inside! :)
  - puranjay 5y ago
    This is true for all art markets - nothing surprising. Outside of a few masters, you can’t expect immediate liquidity from your art.
  - panarky 5y ago
    > Nobody wanted to pay for it Easy to solve with shill bidding to manufacture an illusion of demand and value.
- kaustavha 5y ago
  What rights do you get if you buy a painting? Can you enforce any rights you give yourself after buying a painting?
  - ddalex 5y ago
    The right of ownership of the actual asset, not of a paper in the safe with the written address of the asset :)
- ramijames 5y ago
  You are entirely misunderstanding the purpose of NFTs. As a first-hand buyer, you are paying to act as a patron for artists/projects that you believe in. You enable those people to spend time producing more art that you like. This is a very interesting and valuable use-case in and of itself. I have recently started putting up my digital work and it is the first time in my life (41) that I can create unique works and have access to a market that allows people to support me. Don't poo poo what you don't really understand. For anyone interested: https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/58789883292276363432626242406826596569980987264880464997549246459021856079873 https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200... I have a store up here: https://www.ramijames.com/ https://www.ramijames.com/
  - puranjay 5y ago
    My wife had a conference yesterday that was initially going to be held in Berlin but because of the pandemic, happened entirely online. The conference organizers set up a virtual environment in Gather.town where your avatar could walk around a game-like virtual room and initiate conversations with people (over Zoom) by walking up to them. There were different rooms where you could attend different sessions. For my wife and most of the academics present, it was their first virtual/gaming experience, and they all loved it. People don’t realize it but the metaverse is here already. In the metaverse, your avatar is your digital identity. How much would people be willing to pay for a more desirable digital identity (avatar)? What if that digital identity also got you exclusive access to select clubs? None of this is new - people pay tons of money for more desirable real world identities (clothes, makeup, accessories). If we spend half our lives online, is it really surprising that people will eventually want a more desirable online identity too?
    - ItsMonkk 5y ago
      Gamers have been spending real money for proprietary "skins" for quite a while now. Epic makes billions on FortNite through such a system. But they are only able to charge such fees because they are in control of the system. They would never voluntarily give up that control if they could. Making the world that players choose to socialize in is where the hard work is. Facebook is betting that the Metaverse is the next step. The Metaverse is already here, and it's called VRchat. There are millions of skins that chatters can use for free, though like early YouTube much of it is breaking copyright. It takes real skill to create a skin, and if you want a custom skin there are people willing to pay for the creation of a skin that fits them. These custom jobs can take modelers tens to hundreds of hours sculpting and animating and they can charge thousands for their hardwork. This is all already happening. That is to say, I see no reason that NFTs or cryptocurrency changes any of this. It's just false scarcity. The artists are already getting paid for their work.
- puranjay 5y ago
  It disappoints me that comments on crypto threads on HN have the same tone as NYTimes crypto articles. I would have expected this place to be more curious and less dismissive
  - panarky 5y ago
    > more curious and less dismissive If a thing doesn't make sense to me, it must be that the thing is foolish, not that I lack understanding. What's really foolish is thinking in linear, mean-reverting, zero-sum terms in the face of exponentially increasing knowledge and value.
nivertech 5y ago
I guess it means 8M installs. But how many are actual active users?
- arcticbull 5y ago
  I used to mine ETH to heat my condo, but at some point mid way through H1 it stopped being interesting. I'd love to know if I'm being counted.
  - omarfarooq 5y ago
    According to Joe Marini (previously Lead Developer Relations for Chrome Web store): > The number [of weekly users] you see in the Chrome Web Store is the amount of users whose Chrome browser has checked for an update of your app within the last week. It is not the number of people who have installed your item. Source: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-apps/c/Sie4cmSTZmk/m/d-YJtCdcvW0J?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-apps/c/S...
    - keymone 5y ago
      Except chrome will check for update automatically regarardless of whether you use the extension or not.
- knrz 5y ago
  10M MAU https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-10-million-maus-making-it-the-worlds-leading-non-custodial-crypto-wallet/ https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-...
treelovinhippie 5y ago
And all the calls go through Infura which runs on AWS. Joe Lubin (former Goldman Sachs) owns ~50% of both Metamask and Infura. Centralized much?
- boramalper 5y ago
  I vouched for this comment as I believe it has a point: I think decentralised systems in general have a tendency to yield centralised hotspots for convenience and scalability reasons as networks grow, but in the case of blockchains and Ethereum in particular, running a full node (that can provide the functionality of Infura for instance) is becoming extremely infeasible. I acknowledge that this is still much more decentralised in comparison to status quo but it is important to acknowledge also that it is still not as decentralised as it is marketed to be.
  - ausudhz 5y ago
    You can run a full node on AWS in a couple of minutes, they've a managed Blockchain service that allows you to create an eth node in literally a few click. Not sure what's infeasible for you, but to me that sounds pretty reasonable. If you've the skills just download geth and run it yourself in your own hardware. There are people who do this on a daily basis to mine eth and they're not hackers.
    - keymone 5y ago
      Not a full node, a fast-sync trusting third party node. I doubt anyone is able to sync a full node from genesis block anymore.
      - ausudhz 5y ago
        Is possible in theory, if you don't have the resources to do so is another problem.
      - omarfarooq 5y ago
        > I doubt anyone is able to sync a full node from genesis block anymore. Because 1 terabyte of storage space is so out of reach, today? [1] Ethereum Chain Full Sync Data Size: 954.28 GB as of 09/06/2021 [2] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/ https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_chain_full_sync_data_size https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_chain_full_sync_data...
erulabs 5y ago
I did some coding on a project idea with Metamask / web3.js (https://web3js.readthedocs.io/ https://web3js.readthedocs.io/) about a year ago - tooling was pretty rough around the edges. Distinctly remember thinking if Metamask and web3 worked brilliantly and had great documentation, they'd be on track to win eventually. How good the web3 documentation is imo is the #1 indicator of what ETH market-cap should be, same as Stripe.
TicklishTiger 5y ago
Is any one of these 8 million here? I would love to hear what people do with it.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  I'm one of them, used years ago to test some development on the Blockchain and now I use it mainly as wallet for some small holdings that I've in few tokens
- mattbeckman 5y ago
  I imagine the audience crossover between crypto and HN is quite high.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  i bought an urbit planetoid or something
- pixxel 5y ago
  I use it via Firefox. https://satellite.earth/ https://satellite.earth/
  - ramijames 5y ago
    Hadn't come across this site before. Very cool and exactly what I'd been looking for. Thanks!
- xenihn 5y ago
  me i originally used it in 2017 for cryptokitties, now im using it again for degenerate
- mtqwerty 5y ago
  Metamask is the wallet with the lowest barrier to entry for new folks entering the crypto space. Going from no knowledge to having a wallet is much quicker with metamask than hardware wallet. Its also great for devs deploying contracts on test networks.
- 5y ago
aqrre 5y ago
The Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ether-metamask/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ether-metamas...
Tepix 5y ago
MetaMask is also being used with Avalanche which contains the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in its C-Chain.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

46 points by omarfarooq 5y ago

I guess a lot of people want to spend $200 in gas fees to buy a URL to a JPEG that comes with no rights whatsoever to the image itself. What a time to be alive. Maybe I was wrong, maybe the Fed's loose monetary policy has gone too far after all haha.

ausudhz 5y ago
I think the main point is that people are happy to do so cause they can sell that JPEG for more later on The gas problem is well known and it has been addressed with the London upgrade
- Danieru 5y ago
  > The gas problem is well known and it has been addressed with the London upgrade Gas prices are up. London only made the prices more predictable; high and predictable. "prices go high and low" is not a problems who's solution is "keep it high all the time". The actual promised solution to high gas prices is sharing. Which got delayed behind proof of stake backed validation. Aka: delayed until other long delayed feature is shipped.
  - ausudhz 5y ago
    Yes that was my point, it was the main change for eth 2.0 but it still has a long way to go. I guess other chain that use an utility token and main token have a better control over the transaction fee as compared as eth.
mattbeckman 5y ago
BAYC gave rights to NFT owners, and that's why they became the example. Larva Labs / Punks is doing it wrong IMO.
dheera 5y ago
I tried to sell some AI-generated cat pictures and it didn't work. Nobody wanted to pay for it. I think some element of it is a famous person doing it, so the spending is associated with the person, not the URL to the art. Which basically means, if you're famous, you can get some free money from idiots.
- kaustavha 5y ago
  You need to create customers and wide appeal first. Cryptopunks were free at the start, so were cryptokitties. Lootproject just launched and anyone could mint a free loot bag and the floor is now 10 ETH. Beeple NFTs were dirt cheap. Pixel portraits were dirt cheap. Maybe you set your price too high and didnt do a good job of marketing? Learn about the space before you try to make a quick cash grab?
  - dheera 5y ago
    Oh I just figured it was designed to be a free cash grab, I set the price pretty low actually. Not really interested in learning how to market vaporware but if idiots want to pay me for nothing I'll take it
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      You got downvoted because in order to win the money, you have to play the game. You can't be openly cynical. Keep that inside! :)
- puranjay 5y ago
  This is true for all art markets - nothing surprising. Outside of a few masters, you can’t expect immediate liquidity from your art.
- panarky 5y ago
  > Nobody wanted to pay for it Easy to solve with shill bidding to manufacture an illusion of demand and value.
kaustavha 5y ago
What rights do you get if you buy a painting? Can you enforce any rights you give yourself after buying a painting?
- ddalex 5y ago
  The right of ownership of the actual asset, not of a paper in the safe with the written address of the asset :)
ramijames 5y ago
You are entirely misunderstanding the purpose of NFTs. As a first-hand buyer, you are paying to act as a patron for artists/projects that you believe in. You enable those people to spend time producing more art that you like. This is a very interesting and valuable use-case in and of itself. I have recently started putting up my digital work and it is the first time in my life (41) that I can create unique works and have access to a market that allows people to support me. Don't poo poo what you don't really understand. For anyone interested: https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/58789883292276363432626242406826596569980987264880464997549246459021856079873 https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200... I have a store up here: https://www.ramijames.com/ https://www.ramijames.com/
- puranjay 5y ago
  My wife had a conference yesterday that was initially going to be held in Berlin but because of the pandemic, happened entirely online. The conference organizers set up a virtual environment in Gather.town where your avatar could walk around a game-like virtual room and initiate conversations with people (over Zoom) by walking up to them. There were different rooms where you could attend different sessions. For my wife and most of the academics present, it was their first virtual/gaming experience, and they all loved it. People don’t realize it but the metaverse is here already. In the metaverse, your avatar is your digital identity. How much would people be willing to pay for a more desirable digital identity (avatar)? What if that digital identity also got you exclusive access to select clubs? None of this is new - people pay tons of money for more desirable real world identities (clothes, makeup, accessories). If we spend half our lives online, is it really surprising that people will eventually want a more desirable online identity too?
  - ItsMonkk 5y ago
    Gamers have been spending real money for proprietary "skins" for quite a while now. Epic makes billions on FortNite through such a system. But they are only able to charge such fees because they are in control of the system. They would never voluntarily give up that control if they could. Making the world that players choose to socialize in is where the hard work is. Facebook is betting that the Metaverse is the next step. The Metaverse is already here, and it's called VRchat. There are millions of skins that chatters can use for free, though like early YouTube much of it is breaking copyright. It takes real skill to create a skin, and if you want a custom skin there are people willing to pay for the creation of a skin that fits them. These custom jobs can take modelers tens to hundreds of hours sculpting and animating and they can charge thousands for their hardwork. This is all already happening. That is to say, I see no reason that NFTs or cryptocurrency changes any of this. It's just false scarcity. The artists are already getting paid for their work.
puranjay 5y ago
It disappoints me that comments on crypto threads on HN have the same tone as NYTimes crypto articles. I would have expected this place to be more curious and less dismissive
- panarky 5y ago
  > more curious and less dismissive If a thing doesn't make sense to me, it must be that the thing is foolish, not that I lack understanding. What's really foolish is thinking in linear, mean-reverting, zero-sum terms in the face of exponentially increasing knowledge and value.

nivertech 5y ago

I guess it means 8M installs. But how many are actual active users?

arcticbull 5y ago
I used to mine ETH to heat my condo, but at some point mid way through H1 it stopped being interesting. I'd love to know if I'm being counted.
- omarfarooq 5y ago
  According to Joe Marini (previously Lead Developer Relations for Chrome Web store): > The number [of weekly users] you see in the Chrome Web Store is the amount of users whose Chrome browser has checked for an update of your app within the last week. It is not the number of people who have installed your item. Source: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-apps/c/Sie4cmSTZmk/m/d-YJtCdcvW0J?pli=1 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-apps/c/S...
  - keymone 5y ago
    Except chrome will check for update automatically regarardless of whether you use the extension or not.
knrz 5y ago
10M MAU https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-10-million-maus-making-it-the-worlds-leading-non-custodial-crypto-wallet/ https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/metamask-surpasses-...

treelovinhippie 5y ago

And all the calls go through Infura which runs on AWS. Joe Lubin (former Goldman Sachs) owns ~50% of both Metamask and Infura. Centralized much?

boramalper 5y ago
I vouched for this comment as I believe it has a point: I think decentralised systems in general have a tendency to yield centralised hotspots for convenience and scalability reasons as networks grow, but in the case of blockchains and Ethereum in particular, running a full node (that can provide the functionality of Infura for instance) is becoming extremely infeasible. I acknowledge that this is still much more decentralised in comparison to status quo but it is important to acknowledge also that it is still not as decentralised as it is marketed to be.
- ausudhz 5y ago
  You can run a full node on AWS in a couple of minutes, they've a managed Blockchain service that allows you to create an eth node in literally a few click. Not sure what's infeasible for you, but to me that sounds pretty reasonable. If you've the skills just download geth and run it yourself in your own hardware. There are people who do this on a daily basis to mine eth and they're not hackers.
  - keymone 5y ago
    Not a full node, a fast-sync trusting third party node. I doubt anyone is able to sync a full node from genesis block anymore.
    - ausudhz 5y ago
      Is possible in theory, if you don't have the resources to do so is another problem.
    - omarfarooq 5y ago
      > I doubt anyone is able to sync a full node from genesis block anymore. Because 1 terabyte of storage space is so out of reach, today? [1] Ethereum Chain Full Sync Data Size: 954.28 GB as of 09/06/2021 [2] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073SBQMCX/ https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-1TB-SSD-WDS100T2B0A/dp/B073... [2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_chain_full_sync_data_size https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_chain_full_sync_data...

erulabs 5y ago

I did some coding on a project idea with Metamask / web3.js (https://web3js.readthedocs.io/ https://web3js.readthedocs.io/) about a year ago - tooling was pretty rough around the edges. Distinctly remember thinking if Metamask and web3 worked brilliantly and had great documentation, they'd be on track to win eventually. How good the web3 documentation is imo is the #1 indicator of what ETH market-cap should be, same as Stripe.

TicklishTiger 5y ago

Is any one of these 8 million here? I would love to hear what people do with it.

ausudhz 5y ago
I'm one of them, used years ago to test some development on the Blockchain and now I use it mainly as wallet for some small holdings that I've in few tokens
mattbeckman 5y ago
I imagine the audience crossover between crypto and HN is quite high.
cblconfederate 5y ago
i bought an urbit planetoid or something
pixxel 5y ago
I use it via Firefox. https://satellite.earth/ https://satellite.earth/
- ramijames 5y ago
  Hadn't come across this site before. Very cool and exactly what I'd been looking for. Thanks!
xenihn 5y ago
me i originally used it in 2017 for cryptokitties, now im using it again for degenerate
mtqwerty 5y ago
Metamask is the wallet with the lowest barrier to entry for new folks entering the crypto space. Going from no knowledge to having a wallet is much quicker with metamask than hardware wallet. Its also great for devs deploying contracts on test networks.
5y ago

aqrre 5y ago

The Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ether-metamask/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ether-metamas...

Tepix 5y ago

MetaMask is also being used with Avalanche which contains the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in its C-Chain.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]