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July 3, 2022
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Technical analysis can help you predict the future market movements of Bitcoin more accurately and trading view is one way of doing so.
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In the web 3.0 space, metamask is one leading organization when it comes to real world applications. Metamask is an active community which is constantly working on it’s metamask wallet to provide a capable medium of accessing the new blockchain technology based internet.
Metamask wallet is not just a wallet, but also a powerful tool to interact with ethereum blockchain and it’s sidechains. In this tutorial we will guide you through the process of adding a new network in metamask wallet.
Before jumping directly to the tutorial, one should understand the terms around this topic and get acquainted with the concepts of blockchain and the metamask itself. Let’s begin with a brief introduction to metamask.
Metamask is one of the most used and trusted wallets available in the crypto space. It is a one-stop solution when it comes to buying, selling, holding or even swapping tokens with different addresses.
Metamask by default works on Ethereum mainnet. However, it provides flexibility when it comes to interacting with other EVM compatible (Ethereum Virtual Machine) networks. In this tutorial, we are going to explore this very angle of metamask i.e. switching networks.
As we already discussed, metamask wallet is primarily designed to work with Ethereum blockchain. It provides Ethereum wallets to its users which can be used to interact with different decentralized applications developed on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethereum blockchain for sure offers great advantages and upgrades over say bitcoin blockchain. But as the crypto industry is growing, various blockchains are being developed for specific uses.
Thus, a user might want to connect their metamask wallet to blockchains other than the Ethereum blockchain which are sometimes faster and most importantly, cheaper. In that case, metamask allows users to connect to other blockchains that are EVM compatible.
Reasons for setting up different network on metamask wallet:
There are various blockchain networks which help to overcome the few setbacks of the Ethereum blockchain.
There are different types of Networks which are Non- Ethereum networks. As users want to connect their metamask wallet to Non- Ethereum networks, they can connect to the networks which are EVM compatible.
The most known or popular Networks which are based on Ethereum but do not belong to Ethereum are
Binance Smart Chain(BSC) is nothing but a blockchain that works with Binance Chain or you can say deals parallelly with Binance Chain i.e. it's an independent blockchain, it has nothing to do with the working status of the Binance platform.
It gets easily compatible with Metamask and can be configured with it in real quick time. This platform makes developers work more easily, as they can easily port their projects.
Polygon or MATIC is the structure to develop the blockchain network which is ethereum compatible (EVM Compatible). It supports a multi-Chain Ethereum ecosystem. This system is more open and powerful. It offers solutions for gas fees and slow speed without disturbing the security.
It combines Ethereum and Sovereign Blockchain, as they solve all the drawbacks that come when you directly interact with ethereum, and by the combinations, it has a multi-chain system.
HECO is one of the projects like Polygon which is built by developers for developers. This platform offers an energy-efficient public chain. As the whole network is decentralized, users get more freedom over ethereum.
HECO reduces the block-out time by using HPOS. It has lower transaction fees for developers and to create a more smooth and better cross chain experience it supports cross chain assets transmission.
The above mentioned are sort of custom networks. The basic explanation of a Custom network is the network that is based on ethereum but it is not part of ethereum.
Ehtereum deals with various contracts but the custom networks will always be one step ahead of it. By this we mean Custom Network makes a smarter choice. Ethereum and custom Networks share a lot of similarities but the major difference will lie in blockchain’s data.
As Ethereum and Custom Networks share a lot of similarities and since all the networks are based on Ethereum, you don’t need to have different addresses for other custom networks. It may depend on the network too if they provide a single address over all networks or not. If they do, you’ll have the single recovery phrase key to operate all your assets over all the networks.
Sidechains and Layer 2 chains are both scaling methods that enable you to do more transactions than before at a reduced gas fee. They do so by offloading the transactions from the main network. Sidechains and Layer 2 chains just provide an alternate extra chain so that the traffic on the main network is reduced.
Although both Sidechains and Layer 2 chains are similar, there are some differences as well. The main difference is how the network is secured; sidechains do so by having their own validators and miners whereas Layer 2 chains leverages validators from the main network.
Sidechains have more independence and flexibility but they are less secure than Layer 2 chains whereas Layer 2 solutions provide more security but in doing so, reduce the independence and flexibility, meaning they can't be customized much.
If you are familiar with Metamask then you must have heard the words Mainnet and Testnets here or there but do you know what they mean? Well mainnet is where all the tokens actually have some value whereas Testnets are spaces where the developers test their smart contracts and because testing is done here, these tokens will not have any real value.
Mainnets and testnets operate independently from each other. Purpose of mainnet is to provide a LTO functional blockchain where real transactions are stored on real blockchains whereas Testnet is a LTO testing environment where fake transactions happen.
The transaction frequency in Mainnets is also a lot higher than that of Testnets for obvious reasons. It is also possible to mine and earn rewards in the mainnet as opposed to testnets.
Now that you are well equipped with the basics of metamask let us now move forward with how to add a new network on a metamask. Following is a detailed description of the steps to be followed.
Step 1: Click on the menu option
Step 2: Go to settings option and look for networks
Step 3: In the networks option look for ‘Add Network’ and you will be redirected to a page shown in the image below.
Step 4: Now add all the details that are asked for and click on Save. Your new network is now set up. As we can see we have entered the details for a Binance Smart chain, that network is now added to your wallet.
The steps mentioned above are for the mobile app. However, even if you use this on your web browser you have to follow the same steps.
Following is a table depicting different parameters to a few custom networks for adding details.
Network Name: Binance Smart Chain
New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/
ChainID: 56
Symbol: BNB
Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com
Network Name: Binance Smart Chain - Testnet
New RPC URL: https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.binance.org:8545/
ChainID: 97
Symbol: BNB
Block Explorer URL: https://testnet.bscscan.com
Network Name: Polygon Mainnet
New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/
ChainID: 137
Symbol: MATIC
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.matic.network/
Network Name: Mumbai TestNet
New RPC URL: https://rpc-mainnet.maticvigil.com/
ChainID: 80001
Symbol: MATIC
Block Explorer URL: https://mumbai-explorer.matic.today/
Network Name: HuobiChain- Mainnet
New RPC URL: https://http-mainnet-node.huobichain.com
ChainID: 128
Symbol: HT
Block Explorer URL: https://hecoinfo.com
Network Name: HuobiChain Testnet (International)
New RPC URL: https://http-testnet.hecochain.com
ChainID: 256
Symbol: HT
Block Explorer URL: https://scan-testnet.hecochain.com
This was the complete tutorial about how to setup a new network in metamask wallet. Using the same process given above, you can connect a large number of networks including some mainnet networks and some testnet networks for developers.
Due to the flexibility that metamask wallets offer, it is quite obvious that metamask will lead the way of web 3.0 in the near future as well.
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