How to Avoid Crypto Scams w/Taylor Monahan | S3 E5

Taylor Monahan is Product Lead at MetaMask, a crypto wallet and gateway to blockchain apps.

As an early crypto adopter, Taylor has watched almost every cycle of crypto rise and fall. About a year after the Ethereum presale, she learned there were real blockchain apps popping up on the Ethereum blockchain. And even in these early days, she recognized the industry’s need for something critical — better wallets.

Taylor pivoted into working on creating her own wallet with a more user-friendly interface and….actual buttons and stuff. This turned into My Ether Wallet, which was later bought by MetaMask. Taylor has been building web3 tooling and working on making wallets easier to use ever since.

During our discussion with Taylor, we dive into wallet security and cover basic wallet 101 info. She runs us through some best practices and ways in which your wallet can become compromised, as well as how a recovery phrase/seed phrase works and how to prevent attacks.

Taylor also shares how she almost got scammed, Diana shared how her sister did get scammed, and we go over the importance of double checking, triple checking, and gut checking before you sign a transaction. Taylor also informs us of some steps you can take to cross-examine the validity of whatever site you are interacting with.

Finally, Taylor shares how the web3 space (and wallets in particular) have evolved over the years of her long and successful career, and she leaves us with some spicy hot takes on the future of web3.

🔗 FOLLOW US
Rehash: twitter.com/rehashweb3
Diana: twitter.com/ddwchen
Taylor: twitter.com/tayvano_
MetaMask: twitter.com/metamask

⌛ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:30 Sponsors!
4:10 Rehash: A Little Pod of Happiness
5:43 Taylor’s background
9:02 Using Ethereum in the early days
11:04 Wallet 101
14:48 Wallet security best practices
17:10 Wallet compromisation
18:35 MetaMask accounts and recovery phrases
21:24 How to prevent attacks
25:00 A scam Taylor almost fell for
28:01 How to double, triple, and quadruple check before you sign a transaction
33:00 The evolution from My Ether Wallet to MetaMask
38:57 How Taylor’s perspective on web3 safety has changed over the years
42:03 Taylor’s hot takes
48:54 Follow Taylor!
51:47 Shoutouts!

🤝 SPONSORS
Lens Protocol: lens.xyz
Avenue: avenue.place
Govrn: govrn.app

DISCLAIMER: The information in this video is the opinion of the speaker(s) only and is for informational purposes only. You should not construe it as investment advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it does not represent any entity's opinion but those of the speaker(s). For investment or legal advice, please seek a duly licensed professional.