Meteoric growth
In October 2020, MetaMask surpassed 1 million cumulative monthly active users across our browser extension and mobile app for the first time. MetaMask Mobile, DAOs, blockchain gaming, and most of all the demand for access to DeFi drove MetaMask to grow more than 4x from October 2019 to October 2020.
Yet, the meteoric growth of MetaMask did not stop in October. Today, approximately 6 months later, MetaMask has grown an additional 5x, and is used by more than 5 million users every month. While a growing number of them are using MetaMask Swaps, which has witnessed over $2 billion USD in accumulated transaction volume over the past 6 months, there are also other reasons why most people continue to choose MetaMask as their gateway to the decentralized web.
Adoption in the Global South
More and more people living in the Global South are using crypto, and many see MetaMask as a safe and trustworthy option. For example, India and Indonesia are both in the top 5 countries in terms of MetaMask mobile adoption, while Vietnam and Nigeria are in the top 10.
Increasingly, these people use MetaMask to earn a supplemental income or to make long-term investments. Many are unable to access their local banking system and thus need alternative technology to act as a savings account. For example, the average percentage of people who don’t have access to a bank account in South America by country is 54%.
While many are not able to get bank accounts, even the ones that do might have more trust in using MetaMask than banks. Many people in these countries do not trust their governments, and thus eagerly look towards alternatives. We will discuss this trend in an upcoming webinar on May 5th with Emerging Impact.
A Universal Solution for All of Web3
The recent mainstream craze over NFTs has attracted a much larger audience to the Ethereum ecosystem. In fact, Google searches for "NFT" are more than four times higher than for DeFi. Furthermore, on-chain data clearly indicates that NFTs are being widely embraced by users across the Ethereum ecosystem. In fact, accessing NFTs is now the second most popular use case for MetaMask, only behind swaps.
MetaMask is the Gateway to the Decentralized Web
We cannot express how honored we are to continue democratizing access to Web 3.0, and we look forward to serving the millions more users that are joining the decentralized web. This growth opens the possibility of a more ethical internet where people control their own data and identities, can build communities, and freely associate with one another through interactions that are empowering and based on consent.