There is a critical issue discovered in the MetaMask Blue extension that started writing a lot of data to the solid-state drives (SSDs) of users’ computers. As per the reports, the SSDs get damaged, and their life expectancy reduces because of this. According to the parent company of MetaMask, Consensys, the problem has caused alarm in the crypto community.
A couple of users reported unusually high disk usage after installing the MetaMask plugin on Chrome-based browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Opera. According to reports, the data is being written at a constant rate of about 5 megabytes a second—500GB a day and 25 terabytes in three months. To give you some perspective, SSDs last on average 5 to 10 years. However, such usage can greatly reduce that time.
Lawrence identified the problem towards the end of June when GitHub user “ripper31337” publicly reported it. After that, a few other users also complained. Another person further added that MetaMask had written 100 GB of data on their MacSSD in a day. “As soon as I disabled the extension, activity dropped almost immediately.”
Consensys has recognized the issue and stated that the developers are already working towards a fix. A representative of the firm said that browser wallets like MetaMask will often write state data to disk, which seems natural. Nevertheless, some users are experiencing disk activity at an abnormal level, which seems to correlate with accounts that have particularly large state data.
“We are looking into it and will resolve it soon,” said a Consensys official.
The team is finding ways to minimize the size of any data being written, lower the frequency of writes, and improve how inactive data is dealt with, they added.
The problem may have existed for months. In May, a user named “Quanquan” reported a comparable problem, but not much attention was paid to it. More recently, frustration has been mounting. One user, “PopCatMAGA,” stated the bug already shortened their SSD’s lifespan by 50%, calling it “unacceptable.”
On July 19, they responded on a GitHub thread to confirm that a fix is coming to stay. In the meantime, users might want to disable the extension when it is not in use or check disk activities through system tools.
Conclusion
The MetaMask disk writing bug exposed a fundamental flaw in one of the most popular crypto wallet extensions. With SSDs possibly being worn out a lot sooner than expected, Consensys must do something to regain confidence. The firm pledged a fast response, but users must remain vigilant and take precautions until a fix has been officially deployed. With this latest drama, it’s another reminder of the essentiality of clear communication and dependable engineering in a Web3 tool many users use daily.
