The total cost of all types of transaction fees in MetaMask wallets is as high as 9%

Author: Zen; Source: PANews

The Little Fox Wallet (MetaMask), which has 30 million monthly active users, allows users to directly sell cryptocurrencies for fiat currency to bank cards.

On the evening of September 5, the crypto wallet MetaMask announced the launch of its latest feature "Sell", which allows users to exchange cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies (such as US dollars, euros, pounds) through MetaMask Portfolio and send funds to bank accounts. This feature is currently only available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe. At the beginning of its launch, it will only support ETH on the Ethereum main network, and plans to expand to native gas tokens on the Layer 2 network in the short term.

The sale feature comes about five months after MetaMask launched a feature that allowed users to buy cryptocurrencies using fiat currency from bank accounts, PayPal, debit and credit cards.

According to the official introduction, users must select their region when using this function for the first time. If they use it again later, this step will be skipped and the last selected region will be used by default. Then enter the amount of cryptocurrency such as ETH to be sold, select an offer from multiple service providers, and connect a bank account. MetaMask has established partnerships with cryptocurrency entrance providers such as MoonPay, Sardine, and Transak, but currently only MoonPay and Transak provide services for the "Sell" function. When new users use these service providers, some may need to complete KYC verification on their websites first.

Due to regional policy restrictions, Asian users are temporarily unable to use this feature. We can learn more about the details of this withdrawal service based on the test of Twitter user @S4mmyEth.

British user @S4mmyEth initiated a 0.05ETH withdrawal application in the "Sell" service, and he chose MoonPay as the service provider. After the on-chain transaction was processed, the relevant fees were transferred to MoonPay. In the process, 0.05 ETH with a current price of approximately US$82.78 generated a gas fee of US$0.80 and an on-chain exchange fee of 1%. From submitting the application to receiving the fiat currency, it takes 5 minutes for the whole process.

After all was said and done, @S4mmyEth ended up receiving £59.42, and the instant price of 0.05 ETH when he initiated the withdrawal was around £65, so a total of almost £6 in fees to convert it to fiat, total rate About 9%. Among them, the ETH gas fee is 0.65 pounds (0.80 US dollars), the exchange transaction fee is 1% (0.65 pounds), and the remaining hidden fee of about 4.50 pounds may be charged by MoonPay.

This also means that from the sale of tokens to bank cards by MetaMask, a total of up to 9% of various handling fees have been incurred, which is much higher than expected.

The friendliness of traditional financial institutions towards the crypto market has significantly decreased since the FTX thunderstorm in November last year. After the crypto-friendly bank thunderstorm this year, the exchange channel between the crypto market and legal currency has been narrowed. MetaMask is working hard to reopen this channel. Although users who cooperate with other intermediaries need to pay friction costs, it has simplified the operation process and is more conducive to the entry of more users from outside the circle.

In December last year, MetaMask reached a partnership with PayPal to allow some US users to purchase Ethereum through PayPal. Then in May of this year, this cooperation was extended to all US users (except Hawaii), making it the first Web3 wallet to enable such transactions through PayPal. In addition to purchasing ETH directly, the integration also supports transferring ETH from PayPal to MetaMask to help more users host ETH themselves.

Previously, in April, MetaMask launched the “Buy” cryptocurrency service for more than 90 tokens to users in more than 189 countries. Users can use this feature to purchase more than 75 tokens on 8 blockchains in multiple countries. Buy supports a wider range of payment methods as it accepts debit and credit card transfers, PayPal transfers, bank transfers, instant ACH transfers, and other transfer methods.

In addition to the fiat currency access, perhaps feeling the fierce competition in the wallet track, MetaMask has changed its previous Buddhist attitude, and has continued to update its products in the past year.

For example, the launch of the stake pledge service, users can directly pledge tokens such as ETH to obtain income. Integrated cross-chain bridge providers, including bridge aggregators and individual bridges. What’s more worth mentioning is the “MetaMask Snap” system it launched to safely extend MetaMask’s functionality. It functions much like the Apple App Store for crypto wallets, allowing third-party developers to launch new decentralized applications to expand MetaMask’s functionality. , creating a permissionless ecosystem.

As one of the most widely used applications in the encryption market, every move of MetaMask has attracted the attention of the market. Compared with other wallets that continue to improve the user experience of products, Little Fox's road to become king may have just begun.