This article is Part 1 of "MetaMasquerade: A Look Into MetaMask Data" 🦊 , a 3-part data analysis series I created:

• MetaMasquerade Part 1: Total MetaMask Users (this article ⬇️).
• MetaMasquerade Part 2: Most Common MetaMask Transactions (go here to read).
• MetaMasquerade Part 3: Swaps on MetaMask vs. Other Platforms - Uniswap & Sushiswap (go here to read).

Introduction

MetaMask is among the most well-known names in the crypto space. It is where many new users begin their interaction with blockchain as users and consumers. This article, as the first one in the series of three, offers a broad overview of some key MetaMask user wallet metrics, with the help of Flipside Crypto data.

Methodology

This analysis considers separate MetaMask wallets as a proxy for individual users. In practice, a number of users choose to have multiple wallets (or get locked out of a wallet and create a new one, etc.). However, when it comes to on-chain data, distinguishing between wallets and people becomes an act of sophisticated analysis, something that is beyond the scope of this series, and does not bear a strong impact on the types of questions it aims to answer.

This analysis calculates the number of MetaMask wallets as the number of wallets who have used the MetaMask swap feature (i.e. interacted with the MetaMask Swap Router contract 0x881D40237659C251811CEC9c364ef91dC08D300C), in line with direction provided by the Metamask bounty on Flipside Crypto. Here similarly there is a difference between the intuitive straightforwardness of MetaMask having internal metrics of how many wallets have been created, and the practical concerns of calculating that number on-chain.

The time period is from the earliest available data on these wallets on Flipside Crypto up to the time of this writing, i.e. 12 October 2020 - 25 June 2022).

Data Results

While MetaMask has already sped past 30M registered wallets months ago, as reported in March 2022, the number of wallets that have interacted on-chain with the MetaMask swap feature is just 1.27M:

Takeaways

This analysis examined the 1.27M MetaMask wallets that have used the in-app swap feature, which does not capture the total number of registered wallets that MetaMask had announced. However, among these wallets that we can ascertain with on-chain data as being MetaMask wallets, there are several thousand (up to 18k) users a day, of them ~1k (up to almost 8k) new daily users. On average, a wallet holds in excess of 1k ETH. Only 1% of the wallets have staked ETH (on Lido), but nearly a third of the wallets have minted and a quarter have bought one or more NFTs each.

About

This analysis was created by catscatscode (Flipside, Twitter, catscatscode#3578 on Discord) on 25 June 2022 for Flipside Crypto's "Total Metamask Users" bounty. This analysis represents the author's best effort at interpreting available data, but it is not financial advice.

Of them, up to 18k unique wallets use the MetaMask Swaps each day. As for new user acquisition, up to 7.8k wallets a day use MetaMask Swaps for the first time, although lately that number has been hovering around 1,000 wallets per day:

What about the size of these wallets? For a consistent comparison, because the wallets may hold a variety of ERC20 coins, we looked at their balances of ETH token. On average, as of this writing, a MetaMask wallet that uses the swap feature is holding just over 1.1k ETH balance:

Among other transactions these wallets engage in, in addition to in-app swaps, is staking tokens. A popular way to stake ETH has been with Lido Finance, which stakes any amount (including below the 32 ETH validator limit) of users' deposited ETH on their behalf through partner nodes.

Of 1.27M MetaMask wallets that have used the in-app swap feature, % have also staked ETH on Lido (and received stETH that represents their staked amount):

Another activity that can represent an involved and discerning (a.k.a. "higher order") level of engagement with the web3/blockchain ecosystem is participating in NFT mints and secondary markets. Of all the wallets that have swapped tokens on MetaMask, a quarter have bought at least one NFT on the secondary market.

Almost a third of the wallets (likely with some overlap with NFT buyers) have minted NFT(s) directly from the issuer: