Earlier this week MetaMask turned a whopping 6 years old! I have to admit I was shocked when I saw that and it made me feel pretty old! As a first mover in the space MetaMask has helped enable millions of people to participate in the crypto sphere but being the first mover does not make you immune from criticism something that they have run into as they have become more centralized over the years. With that being said let us dive in on MetaMask and the new kid on the block working to unseat it Tally Ho. Has MetaMask run into a legitimate competitor?

MetaMask History

As I mentioned earlier MetaMask just turned 6 years old! Created in 2016 MetaMask was initially developed as a web browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. To many of my friends in crypto, it served as their first "hot" crypto wallet as it was simple to use and easy to get going with. Over time it has developed into much more than that with integration with "cold" storage wallets starting in 2018, Web3 permissions launched in 2019, and its official mobile app coming out in 2020. During this time it continued to grow in the space and currently has around 30 million monthly active users making it one of the larger players in the space. 

By being on the cutting edge of developments MetaMask was able to secure and lock down its dominance in the space. However, the crypto space is always evolving and moving forward. In the last year or so the phrase "Web 3" has become increasingly common to hear about and companies address either how they are transforming into a Web3 company like Meta or how they are monitoring the space as many other technology companies state. While MetaMask has its place in Web3 it has to continue to evolve as well in its company structure something that it is sorely lacking.  

Tally Ho History

Enter Tally Ho a wallet to pick up where MetaMask has left off. Compared to MetaMask Tally Ho is the baby on the block as it was formation was announced in the fall of 2021! However, unlike MetaMask with its private ownership structure, Tally Ho is a community-driven wallet. Now if you were thinking that this wallet was going to be a fork of MetaMask I hate to be the one to break it to you but it is far far from that. Without getting too technical and into the weeds forking MetaMask would have meant dealing with 6 years of updates and edits to the foundational coding. Tally Ho understandably so went this is way too much data to import, sort through, edit, check, and then make additional changes so they started from scratch and built a wallet out! 

Now with an understanding of the background and where the two different wallets originated from let's dive into what you came here to see and read! The breakdowns and comparisons of the two wallets! 

MetaMask vs. Tally Ho

Something I was surprised to see that caught me off guard was really how these two wallets could not be more different. Initially, I thought how different could these two wallets be? Aren't they just Ethereum Wallets? How many ways can you dress up the same thing? What I was not expecting were details and designs that create an entirely different experience. While both wallets are Ethereum based the comparisons for me ended right there.

Install and Start-Up

When you install Tally difference already emerges with the difference in the length of the seed phase. While there is nothing wrong with a 12-word seed phrase like MetaMask has I appreciate the added security that comes with having a 24-word passphrase. Looking at your first wallet you created there are even more differences that I am in huge favor of! For example due to not wanting to have all of my passive income in one wallet I have to have several different MetaMask wallets which is a pain to have to shift between. With Tally Ho you have your wallet and then within that wallet, you can have other ones which make keeping thing separate but also under the same overall umbrella much much easy to see and navigate! 

Blockchains

The reason I think MetaMask has thrived as it has is due to they opted to keep it simple and stuck to the same chain. Can you add Layer 2's? Yes, but it is not exactly the easiest thing and its functionality is rough at best. Does it get the job done? Absolutely but Tally Ho has seen that the upcoming merge is not going to replace Layer 2 blockchains as it was once thought. Instead, they are building, again the ground up, a multichain experience that considers this and makes navigating between the two simple and quick! While it appears to me that Polygon is up and running I have not seen verification of it as the homepage of the site still says that Polygon is coming soon. In the meantime, you can toggle between the two and see all of the same features that they have built out for the Ethereum Mainnet on display, and boy is it quick switching between the two, unlike MetaMask which requires a series of clicks to finally get through and over to.

Crypto Swaps

I remember when MetaMask first launched its swap feature and how ecstatic people were to be able to do this straight from your account. While it was and still is a great feature in a bear market the smallest things matter and here we have another difference between the two. MetaMask charges a 1% fee per swap while Tally Ho is only charging 0.50% a swap so already that fee is cut in half! While 1% might not seem like enough with 30 million daily active users and the sheer number of swaps that could occur a day it's safe to say that MetaMask is raking in the cash with this feature. Again it is not the worst thing and is understandable given that they are owned by a company and have to turn a profit. Users though do not get to see that benefit as they do with Tally Ho which leads me to my next topic.

DAO 

When Uniswap announced and airdropped their tokens to users of their platform a tidal wave was set off of others partaking in this action to reward not only long-time users but more recent users as well. On this site as well those that withdrew their AMPL to either MetaMask or another self-custody wallet when AMPL first was introduced were eligible for the FORTH airdrop. It was a great way to create some news about a certain token and also let people start taking an active role in the development of these platforms. These governance tokens help run the DAO or decentralized autonomous organization tasked with leading the development of projects moving forward. While many huge platforms and projects have done so there have been a couple of holdouts with rumors swirling around them with MetaMask being one of them.

After much speculation, MetaMask has announced that it will have a DAO and will have a token associated with it however the company behind it is not going to give up control of the direction of the wallet. Rather their DAO will serve more along the lines of a funding mechanism that participants will be able to partake in and help fund the development of "extraordinary advanced MetaMask elements" whatever that means. The DAO will also be used to have people help fund MetaMask which seems to run counter to what everyone has expected. Again Tally Ho differs significantly here since it is a community-driven community-backed wallet. Tally Ho's DAO will be helping dictate its future decisions and will take the lead on the project which in the Web3 world is a much more enticing idea. 

Tokens

At the same time as the DAO announcement MetaMask also announced that they were going to have a token which does make sense from a governance perspective but there has not been any other news besides we are creating one. Other platforms have managed to incorporate usage into their tokens by discounting fees for swaps or similar type features to give the token utility and thus further their value. Since MetaMask did not announce anything like this a lot is left to be desired on if this token when it drops, will be worth users paying the gas fees to even claim. Tally Ho's while all the details have not been released yet in their roadmap you can get an understanding of what the token will provide. The biggest thing is once it is up and running it will be through the token that the swap fees are distributed! The more people that use the wallet and the more that they swap within the wallet the more crypto that will be distributed to those who own the token! Now, this could be a token that you have to stake to earn these rewards as it has not been announced but it is a fantastic feature that encourages users to encourage others to use the wallet! 

Final Thoughts

While naturally, it is often hard, time-consuming, and expensive to move your crypto from one wallet to another in the case of Tally Ho what they are offering is extremely intriguing. As someone who also uses Polygon a lot as soon as that support goes live it will be even more so for me. Tally Ho offers the Web3 structure and community that I think is going to play a key role going forward and moving some of my crypto to it as it builds out is something I plan on doing over the next couple of days. 

This isn't to say that MetaMask is bad it's just that MetaMask is centralized. While I will need to continue to use them for various other blockchains they support that currently are not supported by Tally Ho I struggle to see how this is not the best option for me! As a numbers need the way that the wallet can be broken up into what I like to call sub wallets is an amazing feature that I absolutely am in love with! This alone is a huge plus for me and then adding in how their fee is half of what MetaMask takes? I would be saving a ton of ETH in the switch and really cannot help but say sign me up let's go Tally Ho! 

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