Interview with Consensys: How will MetaMask Snaps change the Web3 ecosystem?

Interviewee: Francesco Andreoli, Head of Developer Community, Consensys, MetaMask

采访：Kean，Foresight News

Organized & Written by: Karen, Foresight News

With the launch of the Linea mainnet, the release of MetaMask Snaps, the launch of the Web3 Fellowship program, and the launch of the Linea DeFi Voyage event, Consensys’ products have been making big moves in recent months, throwing out a series of “king bomb” features and products.

Foresight News recently sat down with Francesco Andreoli, Head of the MetaMask Developer Community at Consensys, for an in-depth interview and discussion about the Consensys team, MetaMask Snaps’ development path, the plans and breakthrough changes it has bringed, and Linea’s progress.

Francesco Andreoli is the head of the developer community at Consensys, MetaMask, and a founding venture partner at venture capital firm Oui Capital, and is also a frequent participant in various Ethereum hackathons, Hacker Houses, and more. Francesco Andreoli is responsible for expanding and supporting the Consensys Developer Community and Ambassador Program to drive improvements in the developer experience, drive developer community strategy, support MetaMask Snaps product launch, and more.

! [Interview with Consensys: How will MetaMask Snaps change the Web3 ecosystem?] ](https://img.foresightnews.pro/202311/3-1699497928513.jpg?x-oss-process=style/scale70)

The following is an interview with Foresight News, some of which have been supplemented for a second time.

Foresight News: How many employees are there in the entire / all teams at Consensys?

Francesco: Consensys is a parent company with multiple product lines, such as MetaMask, Infura, and Linea, among others. Overall, we have about 800 employees spread across more than 40 countries, each with a diverse background and culture. We’re also working with different companies, which is cool.

Foresight News: MetaMask Snaps public beta has been launched recently, why Snaps were developed, and what breakthrough changes will the launch of Snaps bring to MetaMask?

Francesco: Snaps is the latest big feature we’ve introduced to MetaMask and the first step on our permissionless path. Imagine what a surprise we would be able to see with permissionless innovations, Snaps in the Deal Insights, Interoperability, Notification categories, and these Snaps are built and developed by third-party developers, Builders, and startups.

Foresight News adds: In September, MetaMask announced the launch of the Snaps Open Beta, which offers a space around transaction insights, interoperability with non-EVM blockchains such as Bitcoin, and notifications that allow anyone to securely extend MetaMask functionality.

A quick recap of MetaMask Snaps, from a third-party developer’s perspective, can bring their tools to MetaMask, which has a huge user base, like never before, and the ability to conceive features for a variety of use cases and networks. From a user’s perspective, with MetaMask Snaps, it is possible to control non-EVM accounts and assets in MetaMask, and we can also introduce transaction analysis, anti-phishing, and security solutions to the MetaMask pre-transaction window UI to assist us in ensuring the security of transactions, and we can also customize the MetaMask UI.

It is reasonable to believe that Snaps will not only empower the Ethereum and non-EVM network ecosystems, but also drive innovation across the Web3 ecosystem.

**Foresight News: What do MetaMask Snaps mean for developers and users? **

Francesco: For users, Snaps have a huge impact on them. From the fact that we have 100 million users in the MetaMask plugin to the wide impact on users.

Second, Snaps is open, and all developers can build any new features they wish to implement on MetaMask. Whether it’s interoperability, non-EVM-compatible snaps, or notification snaps, our goal is to enable truly decentralized wallet innovation. That said, MetaMask is allowing the community to build whatever functionality they want.

The third point is that developers can build Snaps for various use cases, scenarios, and then users can customize their own MetaMask in the wallet according to their needs.

We believe that no single wallet will be able to monopolize the entire industry in the future, and each user will be able to customize the interface by themselves. For example, you may be a DeFi deep user, and I may be an NFT user, and we can both customize our wallet journey.

Foresight News: You’ve been proposing a Snaps plug-in system since October 2019, so how did you develop this product step by step over the last four years?

Francesco: At the beginning of 2022, we released the canary distribution of MetaMask Flask, and the first feature, Snaps, allowed developers to extend the functionality of MetaMask at runtime. And we’re very active in the ecosystem. From hackathons to hacker houses, community initiatives, developers have built a lot of Snaps, and we’ve received a lot of feedback over the past 18 months and we’re constantly improving.

With the release of the public beta, we have the opportunity to present Snaps in the three main categories of Deal Insights, Interoperability, and Notifications to all users. Interoperability basically means that you’re able to interact with other different ecosystems that aren’t EVM compatible, imagine how convenient it would be for Solana Snap, Cosmos Snap, Bitcoin Snap. The second main category is notifications, and for many gamers, it is very important for many gamers to be able to receive notifications when something is triggered. Another is trading insights, the importance of this category is self-evident, before approving a transaction, you can see whether the contract you want to interact with is a malicious contract, you can also see the asset risk profile, etc.

Foresight News: Are there any interesting stories behind it that you can share?

Francesco: It’s the first time I’ve seen a feedback mechanism where the community can participate and drive the platform in this way, and it’s very exciting. We’ve received some feedback on the documentation, and the hackathon has helped us get feedback from the community and see a variety of attractive use cases. I’m very excited about this permissionless innovation and new use cases in this ecosystem.

**Foresight News: We’ve noticed that there are a lot of developers using Flask to develop Snaps, but only 34 of the first batch of Snaps were announced, how many applications did you receive, and how were they reviewed and screened? **

Francesco: This is just data at the time of publication. Currently, we are communicating with more than 150 partners to add more Snaps categories and integrate more Snaps.

Foresight News adds: At the time of launch, MetaMask also released the first batch of 34 MetaMask Snaps, and the number of Snaps on MetaMask’s official website has reached 39.

Foresight News: How can users be protected in the future without permission?

Francesco: We always put security first, so Snaps runs in a sandbox environment with a licensing model to ensure security, followed by consent.

“Consent is king” is one of our priorities, and we want to pursue transparency with user consent and acceptance.

Foresight News adds: Snaps run in an isolated environment where they have access to a limited set of features that are determined by the permissions that the user is granted during the installation process.

**Foresight News: How much growth do you think Snaps will bring to the non-EVM ecosystem? **

Francesco: That’s a very interesting question. Imagine how Snaps, which are compatible with Bitcoin, Solana, Cosmos, Filecoin, and other networks, will bring growth to MetaMask, Ethereum, non-EVM ecosystems, and even the Web3 space as a whole.

Foresight News: How do you see potential competition between Snaps and non-EVM-based native wallets?

Francesco: As more and more partners build non-EVM ecosystem Snaps, more users will use Snaps. Maybe in the future we will go further in terms of standardization, it will be a “big marathon” and we will continue to add more new categories and snaps.

Foresight News: In the future, will Snaps need a separate web page to cooperate, and can user actions be completed directly in MetaMask using only Snaps, for example, in MetaMask you can control the AA account generated by Snaps?

Francesco: Of course, that’s also a super fun part. Please continue to pay attention and look forward to it. We are now testing different Snaps.

Foresight News: In addition to trading insights, notifications, and interoperability, what other Snaps categories does MetaMask support?

Francesco: As mentioned earlier, the initial focus of Snaps will be on insights, notifications, and interoperability, and in the future anyone can build any type of Snaps they want, and I’m also bullish on social graphs and identity categories.

Foresight News: What do you want MetaMask Snaps to look like in the future?

Francesco: MetaMask Snaps are unlocking unlimited potential, and our vision for permissionless innovation will be realized, and this vision is aligned with user needs.

Foresight News: At present, Linea’s lock-up amount has been steadily increasing, but the increase is relatively slow, how will Linea incentivize developers, project owners, and users?

Francesco: Linea has the advantages of fast certainty, EVM equivalence, low gas fees, and high throughput, and both project parties and users can enjoy Linea’s high-speed and cheap experience.

Foresight News adds: It’s worth mentioning that Foresight News reported this week that Linea is about to launch a 6-week DeFi Voyage event with a total of 10 events and 10 core tasks, and users will be able to choose from more than 80 DApps to interact with.

Linea’s DeFi Voyage will cover tasks such as wallet, cross-chain, exchange, lending, liquidity provision, liquidity mining, etc., and will also issue rewards in the form of flexible bonded tokens Linea Voyage XP rewards in recognition of users’ efficacy to the Linea ecosystem. In addition, Linea wants to focus on the education and exploration of L2 DeFi and provides step-by-step task guides to ensure easy participation for existing and new users.

In addition, at the end of September, Consensys launched a 12-week Web3 Fellowship program, which will provide mentorship, workshops, and up to $1.5 million in potential investment for startups leveraging the MetaMask SDK, MetaMask Snaps, and Linea. This week, Consensys has announced the 16 startups selected for the first batch of Fellowship programs, covering social, DAO governance, smart contract solutions, payments, DeFi, privacy, wallet solutions, ZK, marketing automation, and more.

**Foresight News: What do you think is Linea’s biggest advantage over the competition? **

Francesco: Linea’s biggest advantage is its completely seamless integration with Consensys’ main products, Infura and MetaMask. Secondly, we have a very strong R&D team. Equally important, there are a lot of products that can be fully integrated into the Linea ecosystem.