Hi @Phoenix thanks for your thoughtful comment. All very good points - itâs certainly [still!] the case that Ethereum and Metamask rule the installed base of wallets and overall amount of assets.
Very happy we got it right with the bridge focus in Vega being on a great bridge/deposit experience from Ethereum for ERC20s. Also totally agree that getting Metamask support would be super helpful in terms of the existing installed base of wallets out there.
With the caveat that the V4 testnet is very newâŚ
dYdX V4 asks you to sign a couple of messages (not transactions!) using an Ethereum (Goerli testnet) wallet in e.g. Metamask. It uses this to âlog you inâ. The thing they are definitely not doing here is using Metamask as a normal Cosmos wallet.
We think it is doing something like signing a message and using that as a seed to generate the dYdX/Cosmos keypair within the dapp itself. Then the dapp is signing your transactions for you. This means a malicious dapp that you sign with gets your private key and all your funds.
There are some other downsides. Your balances and transactions on dYdX will not show up in Metamask unless Metamask build some custom integrations.
I think that people who trade a lot will probably prefer a dedicated wallet extension at least until more complete support exists in Metamask, but itâs absolutely true that some MPC wallets will be stuck with Eth signing as the only option and users who have Metamask could have a much easier onboarding to try Vega out if it was supported, which are big reasons to consider doing something like this for Vega.
If youâre doing any size Iâd still totally recommend using a much more secure ârealâ wallet, honestly. the insecurity of it terrifies me!
Despite the downsides it gives them two big benefits:
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Metamask (and most/all other Eth wallet) support without a custom integration or waiting for Snaps to hit the production release of Metamask.
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Not having to approve transactions every time for order submission and management.
FYI dYdX are not the first to do something like this. Itâs become something of a pattern (Hyperliquid do something very similar, for example) and variants on this, including a more secure temporary session key that doesnât give the less secure context the ability to transfer or withdraw your funds, are something weâve looked at too.
We are certainly looking at whether to add something like this to enable people to Vega out more easily, despite the security concerns. (In fact you could even do it without needing Metamask - just make a wallet in the browser from a random seed â though the Metamask signing gives you recoverability which is nice I guess).
Whether we do try out something like this is to early to say, but either way weâll be looking very closely at adoption and feedback when the browser wallet launches as well as how much work it would be, and will see about when/if we might be able to squeeze in something like this.
[Edited to update with latest from our teamâs investigations]
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