Crypto wallet MetaMask says it now has almost as many active users as during the peak of the last bull market.
MetaMask reported the number of monthly active users has climbed 55% in four months — jumping from 19 million in September to more than 30 million in January.
Those figures nearly match record highs seen in January 2022, MetaMask said, when it counted 31.7 million monthly active users. Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) were coming down from their own all-time highs at the time and currently trade at comparable levels.
Bitcoin has doubled in price over the past six months while ether is up about 70%. MetaMask reported passing 10 million monthly active users in August 2021.
MetaMask allows users to self-custody and transact their crypto through a browser extension and a mobile app. “A user is considered anyone who has the MetaMask extension or mobile app installed,” Barbara Schorchit, senior product manager at Consensys, told Blockworks.
“We define a monthly active user as someone who either loads a page within the MetaMask extension or opens the mobile app at least once during any rolling 30-day period. These moments, the 2022 bull market peak and today’s figures, represent the two all-time highs for MetaMask.”
A raft of competitors have gained traction over the past year — including Rabby, Rainbow, Zeal and Phantom — indicating that MetaMask may be holding onto market share as web3 expands.
MetaMask, built by Ethereum development studio Consensys, disclosed the jump in active users alongside announcing that web3 security tool Blockaid would now be activated by default for multiple blockchains.
The Fort Worth-headquartered firm first integrated Blockaid into its primary offering last October as part of a beta phase, which allowed users to opt-in to the system initially described as experimental.
MetaMask enabled Blockaid’s alerts on Ethereum mainnet by default through its browser extension last month, and now they’re doing the same for Polygon, Arbitrium, Optimism, Avalanche, BNB Chain and Linea through both the app and extension.
Blockaid automatically sends alerts to users about potentially malicious transactions, including ones related to phishing attempts, scams and hacks. 576,000 unique MetaMask users enabled Blockaid’s Ethereum alerts during the beta phase, which prevented more than 30,000 malicious transactions, said Schorchit.
Read more: Mark Cuban loses nearly $900k on MetaMask fake
Blockaid protects user privacy by simulating transactions before they happen rather than sharing real data with third parties.
“By proactively preventing malicious transactions, we’re not just enhancing security, we’re empowering our users to navigate the web3 space with greater confidence,” Dan Finlay, MetaMask co-founder and chief ethos officer at Consensys, said in a statement.
He added: “This is a crucial step towards ensuring that MetaMask remains at the forefront of secure, self-custodial crypto wallets for both new and experienced users.”
Ido Ben-Natan, CEO at Blockaid, meanwhile said that malicious activity has “threatened to stifle the opportunity of wider mass adoption” of web3. Blockaid is also utilized by DEX aggregator 1inch, as well as wallets Rainbow, Zerion and CoolWallet.
Blockaid was founded in 2022 by former staff of the Israeli “Unit 8200” cyber intelligence unit, analogous to the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA).
The startup emerged from stealth last October when it disclosed the closure of a $33-million Series A led by Ribbit Capital and Variant. It was first to detect and flag the Ledger Connect Kit phishing attack late last year, which resulted in more than $600,000 in crypto stolen. Estimates suggest $1.7 billion in crypto was stolen in 2023 overall.
Consensys reported that a previous Blockaid integration to protect OpenSea NFT traders had been adopted by 4% of MetaMask users and averted $500 million in theft. BlockAid says it has stopped more than 1.3 million malicious transactions in total.
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