Snaps Sub DAO Grant #001 - Audits for snaps: XMTP, Push Protocol, Nocturne, Demystify Network

Champion: Christian Montoya

The MetaMask Grants DAO has approved a sub-DAO specifically for Snaps with a budget of 70k USDC. As part of our v1 launch, the Snaps team wishes to use this sub-DAO to cover the audit costs for teams that are part of our launch cohort. For context, Snaps v1 will launch in September of this year and it uses an allowlist. A snap must meet the following criteria to be on the allowlist:

Source code is public

Audited by an approved audit partner that can audit JavaScript code

The audit report is shared with the MetaMask Snaps team for internal review

These audits can range from $1k to $30k or more and for some teams this cost can be onerous. If a snap has a use case that we consider strategic (multichain, transaction security, notifications, decentralized identity) then it is in our best interest to help that snap be part of our launch.

This proposal is a combination of 4 applications from snap teams to cover audit costs. The combined amount of the audits is 44.5k USDC. Each request is covered below:

XMTP

Category: notifications

XMTP is a decentralized communication protocol. XMTP provides notifications, messaging, announcements, and group chats, portable across web3 wallets and applications. It is the DM layer for Coinbase Wallet, Lens protocol applications, and has 350+ applications building on top of the protocol as of May 2023. XMTP is end to end encrypted with Signal level security. They have also developed a snap for MetaMask which uses Snaps notifications to show XMTP notifications in MetaMask. XMTP seeks a grant of $15K to cover the cost of an audit for their Snap.

If the XMTP MetaMask grant succeeds, they believe it will allow XMTP and MetaMask to support messaging across web3 applications, which will be a path to increased user engagement and onboarding. If MetaMask Snaps can be leveraged for an embedded wallet or wallet as a service offering for retail brands in the future, they also believe XMTP can be used for communication with wallet users from brands (NFTs - loyalty, rewards, token gated chats, etc.). XMTP believes there is significant demand for this type of communication channel from brands and that it is a way for MetaMask, Consensys, and XMTP to go to market together to scale decentralized communication.

Grant request: 15k USDC to cover the cost of the audit for the XMTP snap.

Push Protocol

Category: notifications

Push Protocol is a decentralized communication protocol for Web3. Any dApps, smart contracts, backends, or protocols can send communication (starting with on-chain / off-chain / gasless notifications) tied to user wallet addresses in an open, gasless, multichain, and platform agnostic fashion.

With the success of Push Snap, Push Protocol accomplishes a major goal for the entire web3 world, i.e., enhancing the user experience and engagement by providing a communications and notifications feature within MetaMask itself. However, push snap has more than one important milestone. With the v1, they are only launching the notifications tied to wallet addresses that will be delivered directly to the MetaMask wallet of the user via the snap. In v2, they also plan to integrate Push Chat wherein any wallet address can receive chat messages directly on their MetaMask without the need to come to any of the Push Chat front-ends. With the v2 of Push Snap, they also plan to include an opt-in feature in MetaMask that allows users to directly opt-in to any channel of their choice that is live on the Push Protocol and receive notifications from their favorite channels in their MetaMask. While these are some of the features they have planned for the next version, they also plan to discuss and include more features in Snaps in the future to enhance the user experience.

Grant request: 12k USDC to cover the cost of the audit for the Push Protocol snap.

Nocturne

Category: privacy

Nocturne's goal is to bring usable and compliant privacy to Ethereum. They are building a protocol for private accounts that uses account abstraction and zero-knowledge cryptography. Users can send, receive, and interact with protocols anonymously. The long-term goal is to build a private smart contract wallet where a user can interact with arbitrary protocols with asset-privacy built-in under the hood. They have built the balance tracking and spending logic into a MetaMask Snap to ensure the easiest possible user experience. For high level overview, check out their Twitter announcement: https://twitter.com/nocturne_xyz/status/1653425371189227521

The v1 protocol is largely completed. They are targeting mainnet launch in August shortly after the audit review.

Grant request: 12k USDC to cover the cost of the audit for the Nocturne snap.

Demystify Network

Category: transaction security

Demystify Network is a Threat Intelligence platform. They make security accessible and affordable for everyone with a mission to drive blockchain adoption with trust and safety. They monitor 400 Million+ EOA and smart contract addresses on Ethereum, 500 Million+ social media posts daily and thousands of sanctioned entities using their intelligence platform that monitors 24x7 various web and blockchain related threats. Blockchains have pseudonymous entities (no KYC) and are permissionless. This makes them an ideal target for bad actors to do illicit activities. Demystify Network provides threat detection, money laundering protection and risk scoring to keep bad actors and illicit funds away from harming individual users. Their fully autonomous, ML enabled AML algorithms trace incomes and expenditures in no time. However, providing timely intelligence to users is critical to protect them. MetaMask Snaps is ideal for them to provide threat intelligence while a transaction is about to execute, so users can make the right choice based on actionable insights.

Grant request: 5.5k USDC to cover the cost of the audit for the Demystify snap.

Total amount of all 4 grants: 44.5k USDC