Web3 Browser Wallets
Some of my favourite browser wallets today
TLDR:
Web3’s fast becoming multi-chain. This growth in chains and dapps has also led to a growth in the number of browser wallet extensions.
This post covers some of my favourite Web3 browser wallets: Metamask, Rabby, Rainbow, Phantom, Xverse, Keplr, and Magic Eden.
When choosing a wallet the most important thing is still adoption from chains and dapps. Wide support from dapps currently trumps aesthetics and features.
The future is uncertain but this proliferation of browser wallet extensions that Web3 participants have to use is definitely a new problem to be fixed.
As Web3’s promise of becoming multi-chain comes to life right before our eyes there’s been an explosion in the number of different browser wallets out there.
Some are cross-chain while others are not, so it’s hard to keep up with all these different chains without having a bunch of wallets.
Today I decided to run through some of my favourite wallets in the market right now and briefly discuss the pros and cons of each of them.
Browser Wallets
Browser wallets are the de-facto way to interact with Web3 dapps (decentralised apps) on different blockchain ecosystems. Metamask really popularised this type of wallet allowing anyone to connect easily to Ethereum protocols like Uniswap and Aave.
However, Web3 is growing really fast and the ease of launching new blockchains has led to an even bigger growth in dapps and protocols. It’s become very hard to keep up with all the different chains let alone different dapps!
This explosion in the number of chains and dapps has come together with a large growth in browser wallets to interface with them. At this point, most active participants in Web3 almost certainly have a list of browser wallet extensions that look a little something like this:
With so many wallets out there it’s hard to know what’s best, so I’ve made a list of the pros and cons of a few of my favourite wallets right now. In a future post I may dive deeper into some of these individual wallets.
Metamask
Metamask originated and popularised the concept of a browser wallet. It was created by Consensys who’ve been a key participant in growing the Ethereum ecosystem.
Metamask made the idea of connecting to a dapp with a simple and free browser wallet extension a possibility on Ethereum. This first mover advantage means that for practically all dapps on EVM chains there’s an option to connect with Meamask, and for this reason it’s unlikely for someone to be active in Web3 without it installed.
Metamask supports all EVM compatible chains, allows easy viewing of transactions on blockchain explorers, supports hardware wallets, and more recently it’s added support for NFTs, swaps, bridging, and portoflio management.
However, in some ways Metamask has been very slow to adapt. In particular it’s still very hard to understand what the output of a transaction will be before it’s signed, so I’d always recommend using something like Pocket Universe in conjunction with it.
Rabby
Rabby’s a much newer EVM compatible browser wallet that’s been gaining a lot of traction. They’ve learned from Metamask and built something that’s in my opinion superior on almost all levels.
Rabby can manage accounts far more readily than Metamask aggregating the total amount of money you have across several EVM chains on a single address. So if for example you have an account holding ETH on mainnet and on Optimism, then it will cleanly visualise the total amount you have on both.
It has inbuilt swapping between tokens, aggregates NFTs across all chains, supports hardware wallets, and even bridging through something called “Gas Top Up”. Plus you can revoke approvals directly without needing to use something like revoke.cash.
Rabby also does a simulation of a transaction before signing it so you don’t necessarily need something like Pocket Universe although I’d still recommend it.
One of the coolest features is that it can replace usage of Metamask with a press of a button. This means that since practically all dapps can connect with Metamask, they can practically all connect with Rabby too!
Plus Rabby is likely to give out an airdrop at some point so there’s no real excuse not to use it instead of Metamask where possible.
Rainbow
Rainbow has been around for a while now as a great way to visualise your NFTs. The Rainbow wallet was released more recently and is a much more aesthetically pleasing to use wallet than Metamask.
Like Rabby it shows you your tokens over several different chains, and it’s got inbuilt swaps and bridging, and even allows you to on-ramp with a credit card using a third-party like MoonPay. Plus they plan to airdrop a token and you can earn points now.
Rainbow also gives a clear idea of output before signing a transaction like Rabby does, and even allows you to track wallets that you may not have the private key for!
However, beyond that it’s certainly not better than Rabby as it doesn’t have the quality of life improvements like revoking and gas top ups, and importantly it lacks the ability to “flip” with Metamask, which means that ultimately you can’t use it on all dapps.
I like the Rainbow wallet a lot, but with Metamask and Rabby it becomes superfluous.
Phantom
Moving away from Ethereum and EVM chains we get into a whole new set of wallets.
Phantom straddles the line as a great multi-ecosystem wallet, supporting Solana (which is where it started) but also Polygon, Ethereum and even Bitcoin, although Bitcoin functionality is currently in Beta.
Honestly though for Ethereum and Polygon (which are EVM chains) it’s probably best to use one of the EVM native wallets above. Yet for Solana and even Bitcoin, Phantom is one of the best options.
It has native support for NFTs, swapping between tokens, on-ramping into crypto with third-parties, and even links over to some dapps and tokens.
Just as Metamask connects with pretty much all EVM dapps, Phantom connects with pretty much all Solana dapps, so I use it for Solana and highly recommend it!
Xverse
Ordinals has breathed new life into Bitcoin which now has it’s own NFTs and even slowly growing DeFi ecosystem. While Bitcoin’s not got a full smart contract language you can already do a good few Web3 related things on it.
Since this side of Bitcoin is pretty nascent though there aren’t as many Web3 browser wallets just yet. The most popular are probably Xverse and Leather (previously called Hiro) and out of the two, I personally prefer Xverse but Leather is just as good.
Xverse has both native Ordinals and also Rare Sats support, which is great as they are the biggest Ordinals categories. Plus you can also see any inscriptions you’ve personally made yourself.
Xverse is not as complete as other Web3 wallets but that’s actually because Bitcoin’s Web3 ecosystem is still early and doesn’t have much functionality either. Yet, Xverse’s wide ranging support in the Bitcoin Ordinals space makes it one of the best to use.
Keplr
Just as the Bitcoin Ordinals space is growing so are the Cosmos based chains. And there are already a surprising number of popular chains built from the Cosmos SDK like Celestia, Injective, Dymension, Osmosis and more.
For the Cosmos ecosystem the Keplr wallet is great because it allows you to see all these chains together and even see your different accounts and tokens in a single view.
Staking is inherent in Cosmos chains and there’s easy access to staking inbuilt directly in the wallet itself. It even has a dashboard to see all your staked coins and the ability to claim rewards directly inside the wallet. This a really great set of features!
The wallet is not particularly complex yet, but just like Xverse and Phantom it’s one of the de-facto wallets for Cosmos so you can connect it everywhere in the Cosmos ecosystem of blockchains and dapps making it one of the best to use.
Magic Eden
Magic Eden (ME) are best known for their NFT marketplace. However, they’ve recently released a brand new wallet onto the scene. The most interesting thing about this wallet is that it genuinely unifies several different chains into a single interface.
As with Phantom you can have Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polygon addresses all showing up together. Yet it feels a lot slicker than Phantom with the ability to do cross-chain bridging and even mint NFTs directly from within the wallet!
These cross-ecosystem wallets feel like they could be the future of this space, however right now ME loses to individual ecosystem wallets as it isn’t supported by most dapps and doesn’t provide ecosystem specific quality-of-life features like revoking.
Magic Eden are a fast moving team and company though so the ME wallet is likely a good one to keep up with as it develops further.
Future
The above list is far from an exhaustive list of browser wallets as there are already way too many to keep up with just as there are also too many blockchains and dapps!
And in all honesty it’s clear that as time goes by there will likely be more and more browser wallets developed.
My guess though is that in the future we’ll either consolidate into a handful of major wallets that are natively cross-ecosystem with a bunch of smaller less popular wallets. Or we’ll have some sort of middleware that makes it easier to manage all these wallets so you don’t have to have 10+ extensions on your browser!
Looking through the list above what wallet would you include that I didn’t?