Setting up MetaMask for Binance Smart Chain (Mainnet & Testnet)

Installing and setting up MetaMask

MetaMask can be downloaded on Chrome and Firefox, or on iOS and Android if you’re a mobile user. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll use the Firefox version, but the instructions will be more or less the same for every platform.

Firstly, you’ll want to head over to the MetaMask Download page. From there, select whichever platform you’re using, and follow the steps to install it on your device. Easy!

Next, follow along with the setup specified by the app. Go ahead and click Create a Wallet. Write down the backup seed phrase somewhere secret (preferably not on an Internet-connected device). Without this phrase, your funds can’t be recovered if your device is damaged or lost. Confirm that you’ve written them down on the next page.

And that’s it! You should now see your wallet, ready to send and receive funds.

The freshly-initialized MetaMask wallet.

Configuring the wallet

You might notice straight away that we’re still dealing with an Ethereum wallet. At best, this won’t work with Binance Smart Chain DApps. At worst, you could lose funds by sending them to addresses you can’t actually use.

Let’s change that. We want to access the Settings to point the wallet towards Binance Smart Chain nodes.

Select Settings from the dropdown menu.

On the Settings page, we want to locate the Networks menu.

The Networks menu.

We want to click Add Network in the top-right corner to manually add the Binance Smart Chain one — it doesn’t come packaged with MetaMask. It’s important to note that there are two networks we can use here: the testnet or the mainnet. Below are the parameters to fill in for each.

Mainnet (This is the one you are probably looking for)

Network Name: Smart Chain

New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/

ChainID: 56

Symbol: BNB

Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com

Testnet

Network Name: 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

We’re going to use the testnet in this tutorial, but you will likely want to use the mainnet. We recommend adding both if you intend to use MetaMask to transfer BNB or Binance Smart Chain tokens.

Once you Save the Network and return to the main view, you’ll notice two things: the network has automatically been set to the one you just entered, and the units are no longer denominated in ETH, but in BNB.

We’ve connected to the testnet, but you’ll probably be connecting to the mainnet.

Making transactions (on the testnet)

Don’t let the Ethereum logo fool you — we’ve tuned into the BSC testnet. Next, let’s get some funds to play with. Hover over Account 1, and click to copy your address to the clipboard. We’ll head over to the Binance Smart Chain Faucet and paste it into the form.

Let’s get rich.

Peggy coins might be of interest if you’re testing out an application that supports BEP-20 tokens. They’re simply tokens issued on Binance Smart Chain that are “pegged” to assets on other chains (like BTC, XRP, USDT, etc.), meaning that they trade at the same price.

Let’s stick to BNB for now. Click on the Give me BNB dropdown and select the amount you wish to receive. You might need to wait a couple of minutes, but the funds will show up in your testnet wallet imminently.

Our newly-funded wallet.

From here, we’ll send the funds off somewhere to demonstrate how it works. We’ve just grabbed a random address from BscScan Testnet that we’ll donate them to. Go ahead and click Send.

You can ignore the parts relating to ether. Here, you can manually adjust the fee if required.

We’ve gone with a transaction of 1 BNB. We’ll leave the fees untouched and hit Next. We then get one more chance to review the transaction — if everything looks good, hit Confirm. And that’s it! You’ll get a notification informing you when your transaction settles.

Closing thoughts

MetaMask has long been the go-to passport for accessing the sprawling Ethereum landscape. But, with minimal effort, anyone can configure it to point towards Binance Smart Chain. This allows them to enjoy years of development put into making MetaMask an indispensable tool for anyone interacting with decentralized applications.