Every blockchain ecosystem needs a reliable gateway for users to interact with decentralized applications. In the Ethereum world, MetaMask became the de facto standard, onboarding over 30 million monthly active users. For Stellar, that role belongs to Freighter Wallet — a browser extension that has quietly become essential infrastructure for developers building on this fast, low-cost network.
Throughout my two decades in IT, and particularly during recent years focused on Stellar and Soroban development, I've integrated numerous wallets into production systems. I'm André Dias Moreira Prol, and in this article I want to share a practical perspective on why Freighter matters and how to bring it into your Web3 applications.
Why Freighter Is Stellar's MetaMask
Freighter, developed by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), is a non-custodial wallet that lives in your browser as an extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Brave. Like MetaMask, it holds users' private keys locally, signs transactions, and exposes a clean API for dApps to request signatures — without ever transmitting sensitive key material.
What sets Freighter apart is its native alignment with Stellar's architecture. Transactions settle in 3–5 seconds with fees averaging around 0.00001 XLM (a fraction of a cent), compared to Ethereum's gas volatility. With the arrival of Soroban, Stellar's smart contract platform, Freighter now supports contract invocation, making it a full-featured tool for the emerging Stellar Web3 stack.
For enterprises exploring tokenization — an area I work with daily — this matters. A tokenized real-estate transfer or a stablecoin payment can be signed and confirmed almost instantly, giving end users a Web2-like experience.
Integrating Freighter Into Your Web3 Application
The official @stellar/freighter-api package makes integration straightforward. First, install it:
npm install @stellar/freighter-api
A typical connection flow checks availability, requests access, and retrieves the public key:
import {
isConnected,
requestAccess,
getAddress,
signTransaction
} from "@stellar/freighter-api";
async function connectWallet() {
const connected = await isConnected();
if (!connected.isConnected) {
throw new Error("Freighter not installed");
}
await requestAccess();
const { address } = await getAddress();
console.log("User public key:", address);
return address;
}
To sign a transaction — for example, a payment or a Soroban contract call — you pass the XDR-encoded transaction:
async function signPayment(xdr, networkPassphrase) {
const { signedTxXdr } = await signTransaction(xdr, {
networkPassphrase, // e.g. "Public Global Stellar Network ; September 2015"
});
return signedTxXdr;
}
The signed XDR is then submitted through Horizon or the Soroban RPC. Notice the pattern: your application never touches the private key. This separation of concerns is fundamental, and in my digital forensics work I've seen how critical it is to keep signing logic isolated from application logic.
Best Practices and Common Pitfalls
From experience integrating Freighter into production dApps, I recommend a few guardrails:
-
Always detect the network. Users may be on Testnet while your app expects Mainnet. Use
getNetwork()and reject mismatches explicitly to avoid failed or lost transactions. - Handle rejection gracefully. Users can decline access or signing. Wrap calls in try/catch and provide clear UI feedback rather than silent failures.
- Verify signatures server-side. Never trust the client blindly; validate the signed XDR before submission, especially in tokenized asset flows where value is at stake.
- Feature-detect, don't assume. Freighter's API evolves. Check method availability before calling newer Soroban functions.
One concrete example: in a pilot involving a tokenized loyalty program, we reduced onboarding friction by 40% simply by auto-detecting Freighter and pre-filling the connection prompt — a small UX detail with measurable business impact. As André Dias Moreira Prol, I've learned that these micro-optimizations often determine whether users stay or abandon a Web3 product.
Conclusion
Freighter brings the familiarity of MetaMask to Stellar's high-speed, low-cost ecosystem, and integrating it is refreshingly simple for developers ready to build. Start experimenting on Testnet today and turn your next tokenization or payments idea into a working Stellar dApp.
Follow more articles by André Dias Moreira Prol on Medium.
