Metamask, the popular Ethereum and DeFi wallet, announces Bitcoin integration as the company continues its expansion into multiple chains other than Ethereum. The wallet boasts 143 million downloads and over 30 million monthly active users, making it one of the most popular crypto wallets in the world.
Developed by Consensys, an Ethereum-born software development arm, Metamask has become a beast of its own, achieving massive success and adoption in the crypto industry. Having operated for over a decade, Metamask defined the user experience of in-browser wallets, copied by many of its competitors. Up until recently, Metamask was an Ethereum-only wallet, focusing on helping users move their wealth across Ethereum bridges, but in October, the wallet announced its planned expansion into Solana, and now Bitcoin has entered the list of blockchains it supports natively.
The Bitcoin integration was made possible in part thanks to the Bitcoin Development Kit, an open-source Bitcoin wallet library designed to make Bitcoin app development very easy.
Metamask’s Bitcoin integration marks a major milestone for the growing Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem, which was previously thought to be a niche only available to new blockchains like Ethereum, thanks to their smart contracting capabilities. In recent years, however, projects like Ordinals revealed that there are very powerful scripting tools available in Bitcoin, which drew the attention of DeFi developers across the industry.
As a result, a variety of layer two projects of all kinds have been launched, bootstrapping an integration and cross-collaboration between Bitcoin and the broader EVM-based (Ethereum virtual machine) DeFi ecosystem. Some examples of Bitcoin DeFi platforms include BOB, Botanix, Rootstock, and the Liquid Network.
Metamask has also announced in October this year that it is preparing to go public in the U.S. markets, and has launched a variety of mainstream-facing features, such as a crypto-powered debit card or Metamask Card, in partnership with the Linea network, as well as “one of the largest on-chain rewards programs ever built”.