Remote Ethereum Clients

Remote clients offer a subset of the functionality of a full client. They do not store the full Ethereum blockchain, so they are faster to set up and require far less data storage.

These clients typically provide the ability to do one or more of the following:

  • Manage private keys and Ethereum addresses in a wallet.

  • Create, sign, and broadcast transactions.

  • Interact with smart contracts, using the data payload.

  • Browse and interact with DApps.

  • Offer links to external services such as block explorers.

  • Convert ether units and retrieve exchange rates from external sources.

  • Inject a web3 instance into the web browser as a JavaScript object.

  • Use a web3 instance provided/injected into the browser by another client.

  • Access RPC services on a local or remote Ethereum node.

Some remote clients, for example mobile (smartphone) wallets, offer only basic wallet functionality. Other remote clients are full-blown DApp browsers. Remote clients commonly offer some of the functions of a full-node Ethereum client without synchronizing a local copy of the Ethereum blockchain by connecting to a full node being run elsewhere, e.g., by you locally on your machine or on a web server, or by a third party on their servers.

Let’s look at some of the most popular remote clients and the functions they offer.

Mobile (Smartphone) Wallets

All mobile wallets are remote clients, because smartphones do not have adequate resources to run a full Ethereum client. Light clients are in development and not in general use for Ethereum. In the case of Parity, the light client is marked “experimental” and can be used by running parity with the —light option.

Popular mobile wallets include the following (we list these merely as examples; this is not an endorsement or an indication of the security or functionality of these wallets):

Jaxx

A multicurrency mobile wallet based on BIP-39 mnemonic seeds, with support for Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, ZCash, a variety of ERC20 tokens, and many other currencies. Jaxx is available on Android and iOS, as a browser plug-in wallet, and as a desktop wallet for a variety of operating systems.

Status

A mobile wallet and DApp browser, with support for a variety of tokens and popular DApps. Available for iOS and Android.

Trust Wallet

A mobile multi-currency wallet that supports Ethereum and Ethereum Classic as well as ERC20 and ERC223 tokens. Trust Wallet is available for iOS and Android.

Cipher Browser

A full-featured Ethereum-enabled mobile DApp browser and wallet that allows integration with Ethereum apps and tokens. Available for iOS and Android.

Browser Wallets

A variety of wallets and DApp browsers are available as plug-ins or extensions of web browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. These are remote clients that run inside your browser.

Some of the more popular ones are MetaMask, Jaxx, MyEtherWallet, and MyCrypto.

MetaMask

MetaMask, introduced in [intro_chapter], is a versatile browser-based wallet, RPC client, and basic contract explorer. It is available on Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Brave Browser.

Unlike other browser wallets, MetaMask injects a web3 instance into the browser JavaScript context, acting as an RPC client that connects to a variety of Ethereum blockchains (mainnet, Ropsten testnet, Kovan testnet, local RPC node, etc.). The ability to inject a web3 instance and act as a gateway to external RPC services makes MetaMask a very powerful tool for developers and users alike. It can be combined, for example, with MyEtherWallet or MyCrypto, acting as a web3 provider and RPC gateway for those tools.

Jaxx

Jaxx, which was introduced as a mobile wallet in the previous section, is also available as a Chrome and Firefox extension and as a desktop wallet.

MyEtherWallet (MEW)

MyEtherWallet is a browser-based JavaScript remote client that offers:

  • A bridge to popular hardware wallets such as the Trezor and Ledger

  • A web3 interface that can connect to a web3 instance injected by another client (e.g., MetaMask)

  • An RPC client that can connect to an Ethereum full client

  • A basic interface that can interact with smart contracts, given a contract’s address and application binary interface (ABI)

  • A mobile app, MEWConnect, that enables one to use a compatible Android or iOS device to store funds, similarly to a hardware wallet.

  • A software wallet running in JavaScript

Warning

You must be very careful when accessing MyEtherWallet and other browser-based JavaScript wallets, as they are frequent targets for phishing. Always use a bookmark and not a search engine or link to access the correct web URL.

MyCrypto

In early 2018, the MyEtherWallet project split into two competing implementations, guided by two independent development teams: a “fork,” as it is called in open source development. The two projects are called MyEtherWallet (the original branding) and MyCrypto. MyCrypto offers almost identical functionality to MyEtherWallet, but instead of using MEWConnect, it offers a connection to the Parity Signer mobile app. Like MEWConnect, Parity Signer stores keys on the phone and interfaces with MyCrypto in a similar manner as a hardware wallet.

Mist (Deprecated)

Mist was the first Ethereum-enabled browser, built by the Ethereum Foundation. It contained a browser-based wallet that was the first implementation of the ERC20 token standard (Fabian Vogelsteller, author of ERC20, was also the main developer of Mist). Mist was also the first wallet to introduce the camelCase checksum (EIP-55). As of March, 2019, Mist was deprecated and should no longer be used.