MetaMask founder Dan Finley "talks about the future of Wallet": Will there be issue coin? AI agents, sustainability of returns

Dan Finley, co-founder of MetaMask, spoke to The Block about the Ethereum ecosystem, AI evolution, and the creation and future of crypto sustainable earnings from crypto wallet vendors. (Synopsis: MetaMask's new feature "Gas Station" is online: USDT, USDC and other 8 tokens can also pay gas fees, is it easy to use?) Dan Finley, co-founder of MetaMask, the world's most popular cryptocurrency wallet, recently spoke to The Block to discuss MetaMask's development strategy, the impact of Ethereum's Pectra upgrade, the integration potential of artificial intelligence (AI), and unique insights into market trends and regulatory environment. Finley emphasized that MetaMask's goal is not only to serve existing crypto users, but also to expand the boundaries of crypto technology, attract the mainstream and jointly shape a more open and collaborative digital future. MetaMask aspirations: a bigger wallet for digital democracy Dan Finley looks back at the evolution of the crypto industry, noting that it has evolved from a little-known niche technology to an active field full of narrative wrangling and vision collisions. Finley observes that many projects are still competing for a relatively niche dedicated user base, and he believes that projects can choose to compete for existing markets, but MetaMask's strategy is always larger, not just a small piece of the existing one: "The technology has matured tremendously, but there is still intense discussion about its exact use and future direction... When you're a market leader, your goal is for the whole market to grow." Now that MetaMask has a large Web3 market share, its strategy focuses on developing "transformational" applications, not just slightly increasing the engagement of existing crypto users, but deeply removing barriers to user entry, such as the complexity of private key backup, the difficulty of obtaining gas fee information, the unreadability of transactions, etc., and more importantly, providing real practicality, so that ordinary people think that this is an excellent product that can bring unprecedented opportunities, not just speculative tools. Finley also cites examples of cases that have the potential to attract "out-of-circle" users: Make it easier for creators to monetize their work, even on a small scale Establish a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to share profits and benefits Change the way people make and spend money He believes that transparent and immutable representation of value will be an important cornerstone of the future social structure, which is especially important in the era of the rise of AI, as many people worry that jobs will be replaced and how resources are allocated will be determined will be a key issue. He believes that blockchain technology provides a solid foundation for individuals to create collectives, cooperatives and small companies, and one of his recent projects is the "Purpose for Profit" to help crowdfunding affordable housing. Evaluating Pectra Upgrades and Snaps When it comes to Ethereum, the recent Pectra upgrade brings initial but key improvements to the user experience. Finley points out that one of the most important features of Pectra is that it allows existing externally owned accounts (EOAs) to be seamlessly upgraded to smart accounts, and MetaMask supports transaction batching on the first day of Pectra's launch, solving the cumbersome step of requiring users to approve before executing transactions when interacting with DApps, and can now be merged into a single transaction: "We will soon also support users to pay for gas with other tokens The data shows that about 40% of DApp interactions are blocked by users' lack of native network tokens, and this improvement will significantly reduce such failure rates." In the longer term, the Pectra upgrade is revolutionizing the way DApps connect, and MetaMask is pushing the ERC-7715 standard to enable an open permission system. Finley expects this feature to go into production by the end of the second quarter of this year and usher in a new era of "convenient and powerful usage." In the future, users can customize the terms when connecting to DApps to achieve more free and real-time permission management. This will apply to session keys, performing limited actions from cold wallets, acting on behalf of the DAO (without requiring all signers to be online at the same time), and even giving AI agents limited permissions. Another of MetaMask's core innovations is its scaling system, Snaps, which Finley mentions five years ago, when the team realized it was impossible to integrate all protocols and chains on its own in a permissionless ecosystem. So they started building Snaps very early. This system allows third-party developers to create new features for MetaMask, including support for different blockchains such as Bitcoin, Solana, Cosmos, and more. Finley believes Snaps will lead to Cambrian-like opportunities for innovation, enabling a more collaborative, community-built wallet. Our goal is that when a user visits a website that uses a new blockchain, the website can directly advise the user to install the desired Snap, and the process is as natural as putting a new bill in their wallet. Revenue sustainability challenges Despite MetaMask's dominance in the market, the sustainability of its business model remains challenging. Finley admits that even though MetaMask Swaps has processed more than $37 billion in transactions and generated more than $200 million in revenue, the product itself has not yet achieved full sustainability. "This becomes trickier as it scales up." To achieve profitability, MetaMask is exploring multiple revenue streams. In addition to transaction exchange services, these include Ether staking, the recently launched MetaMask Card, a real-life metal credit card currently piloted in the UK, US, Europe and Latin America, and a cross-chain bridge service. "MetaMask Card offers competitive rewards that allow users to spend directly with interest-bearing tokens, from which we receive a portion of our revenue, which is even more cost-effective for users than many traditional bank cards." In addition, MetaMask also protects user transactions from MEV (miner extractable value) attacks by bundling them, and Finley emphasized that the team is experimenting with various approaches and theoretically generating revenue through "reverse transactions" (back-run). In terms of organizational size, Finley revealed that ConsenSys as a whole has about 500 employees, and the MetaMask product team is smaller than that. He admits that balancing business sustainability with addressing long-term fundamental issues is an ongoing challenge. Industry Watch: From memecoins to fundamentals, When it comes to market trends, Finley has observed a "spike" in cryptocurrency adoption, and the number of daily active users may be lower than the peak two or three years ago, but higher than the trough at that time, and he expects the market to move from the memecoins frenzy to more "fundamental" projects, that is, applications that have a real impact on the real world. F...