Use the Network Testnet · v1.10 · all tests passing
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MetaMask Snap

What MetaMask integration is for

MetaMask is the most widely used Ethereum wallet, and VLD launches as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum — so for the pre-mainnet phase, MetaMask is your VLD wallet. You hold VLD in MetaMask, you buy and sell it on Uniswap through MetaMask, and you prove ownership of your holdings to the Valdium Operator app by signing with MetaMask. No second wallet, no extra extension.

When Valdium mainnet ships, the same MetaMask keypair anchors your bridge claim: the 1:1 ERC-20 → native VLD bridge reads a signed message from your MetaMask wallet to credit native VLD on the Valdium L1 to an address you control.

Setup

  1. Install MetaMask. Get it from metamask.io — browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave) or mobile (iOS, Android). Create a new wallet or import an existing seed phrase.
  2. Fund it with ETH. You need some ETH for network gas. Withdraw ETH from any major exchange to your MetaMask address.
  3. Add VLD. At the launch block, paste the VLD contract address into MetaMask (Import tokens), or buy directly through MetaMask's built-in swap, which routes via Uniswap. MetaMask shows your VLD balance once imported.

Proving ownership to the Operator app

The Valdium Operator desktop app gates validator access behind proof that you actually control a wallet holding VLD — not just knowledge of a public address. MetaMask provides this proof through an off-chain signed message (personal_sign):

  1. The Operator app generates a unique challenge string (e.g. VLD-AUTH-K7M2-X9P4).
  2. You click Sign in MetaMask to sign that exact message. No transaction, no gas — just a cryptographic signature.
  3. The app recovers the signing address from the signature (via ecrecover) and confirms it matches the wallet holding VLD. Only the holder of the private key could have produced that signature.
Your private key never leaves MetaMask. The verification is a standard personal_sign — the same primitive countless dapps use for login. It costs nothing and touches no on-chain state.

Why a signature, not just an address

Anyone can read the address of a top VLD holder off Etherscan and type it into a form. A public address proves nothing about who controls it. A signed challenge message is unforgeable: it requires the private key, and it carries a nonce that is unique to your session — so a replayed old signature won't pass either.

Post-mainnet: Dilithium3 and MetaMask

Valdium L1 uses Dilithium3 (FIPS 204) post-quantum signatures natively — Ethereum's ECDSA secures the pre-mainnet ERC-20 token, but the L1 itself signs blocks with lattice cryptography. The canonical bridge handles the crossover: you sign an ECDSA message in MetaMask to authorize the bridge, and the bridge mints native VLD to a Dilithium3 address you generate in the Valdium Operator app or CLI. The two key systems coexist; MetaMask owns the Ethereum side, the Operator app owns the Valdium side.

Standalone Valdium Wallet

For users who want a fully Valdium-native experience post-mainnet — Dilithium3 keys, per-origin permissions, native L1 RPC — the standalone Valdium Wallet Chrome extension exists. During the pre-mainnet ERC-20 phase, MetaMask is all you need.

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