MetaMask Grants DAO funds Agoric and Safeheron with first round of grants

‘Tis the season to award the first grants from our newly formed MetaMask Grants DAO—an employee-led program that issues grants to developers building impactful experiences within the MetaMask ecosystem.

We’re excited to announce the first recipients of this initiative— Agoric and Safeheron.

Agoric: laying the groundwork for an extensible internet

Agoric and MetaMask have meaningful history with the former providing tools and mentorship focused on:

1. Helping keep MetaMask users safe
2. Enabling new kinds of exciting extensibility.

By integrating Agoric’s tools, we found that we are able to achieve unprecedented supply chain security through initiatives like LavaMoat, and with Hardened JS (formerly “Secure EcmaScript”), we have been pioneering what it means to add new services to the wallet at runtime through Snaps.

Through the funding of this $500,000 grant, Agoric is continuing their development of a series of open source tools that we think bridge the gap between security and a fun, fast-moving ecosystem.

According to MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay, “At MetaMask, we are building a user-centric consent system, and I believe our work with Agoric will allow us to build a safer platform that empowers users to do more interesting things, enabling not only the composition of dynamic and resilient software but also extending into the social fabric.” You can hear him further discuss the role of Agoric’s SES (Secure EcmaScript) technology in the MetaMask wallet here.

Agoric’s contributions to the security of the JavaScript ecosystem are unparalleled, and we’re proud to support their continued contributions to the free open-source community.

Safeheron: improving the key management experience

Safeheron and MetaMask are continuing their collaboration on bringing improved security and usability to MetaMask’s users. This project will revolve around improving MetaMask’s key management experience, specifically focused on:

1. Helping users manage their Secret Recovery Phrase (SRP) to reduce phishing attacks
2. Reducing the chance of keys being lost

Through the funding of this $35,000 grant, Safeheron will develop and security audit a key sharding solution across MetaMask Flask, the Keystone hardware wallet, and a mobile app (either MetaMask Mobile or an alternative).

Using a 2/3 signing algorithm, two of these devices will be used to sign a transaction creating a multi-factor secure experience for the user. Due to the underlying Multi Party Computer (MPC) algorithm, the private keys will never be held in their entirety on one device—dramatically reducing the possibility of an attacker gaining these private keys and stealing the user’s funds. Furthermore, if a user were to lose 1 of their 3 devices, they can use their remaining 2 devices to issue a new key shard to a new device to maintain their security.

MetaMask, Safeheron, and Keystone have already worked together to implement a 2/2 MPC snap and this grant will fund the evolution of this project into a 2/3 MPC snap.

Looking forward to a productive 2023

Following the launch of MetaMask Grants DAO, we are thrilled that so many projects have applied to receive funding. Build market alert?

If you’re a developer, take a look at our Snaps wish list here and apply for a grant to build out a thriving ecosystem with us.

We can’t guarantee when we will review your request or that it will get approved, but know that our team will review the application pipeline as often as we can. Thanks for being patient with us.

We hope you enjoy winding down your year. See you next month!