As of Q1 2020, MetaMask has officially stopped injecting Web3.js, and has updated the way you access the current provider. Here’s how to make sure your dApp doesn’t break, and how to make it more compatible with the rest of the ecosystem.

‍

The New, More Compatible Way

According to this article: View article

The primary motivation for these changes is to implement EIP-1102 and EIP-1193. This is great for everyone in the dApp community, since now Ethereum providers like MetaMask, Status, and Ethereum-compatible browsers will all have a standard to conform to for exposing their APIs.

The gist of the changes is basically that providers like MetaMask and Status must continue to inject window.ethereum, but now the window.ethereum object itself is a provider type that supports the methods defined in EIP-1102 and EIP-1193. No more having to check window.web3 for its currentProvider — we can simply use window.ethereum as the provider itself!

‍

The code:

‍

Super clean! Essentially, we check if window.ethereum exists, then create a window.web3 object with our own version of web3, using the window.ethereum object as the input provider .

In this case, the await window.ethereum.send({method: 'eth_requestAccounts'}) function calls the pop-up UI dialogue that asks the user’s permission to connect the dApp to MetaMask.

In this case, your dApp is now compatible with any EIP-1102 and EIP-1193 compliant Ethereum provider, making it accessible to many more potential users, and doesn’t lock your dApp into one provider.

‍

If you enjoyed this article, I’d really appreciate if you check out a new tool I’m working on that allows you to easily distribute software, including NPM packages and wallet firmware, using Ethereum, IPFS, and Filecoin with a new open source tool, Valist — sign up for the beta at Valist.io!

We also have an awesome community of web3 and security engineers, come join our Discord server and hang out with us!