How to add a 'Connect Wallet' to your Ethereum app

Sean Watase

Oct 19, 2024 • 4 min read

Introduction

A seamless onboarding experience is crucial for user adoption on Ethereum. The ConnectButton UI component from thirdweb's Connect SDK addresses this need by providing a streamlined solution for wallet connections in applications.

By implementing the ConnectButton, developers can significantly lower the barrier to entry for both crypto-native users and newcomers to the web3 space. This component serves as a crucial gateway, enabling applications on Ethereum to offer web2-like user experiences while leveraging the power of the blockchain.

We'll guide you through the process of implementing and customizing the ConnectButton UI component in your application, helping you create a more accessible and user-friendly web3 experience.

ConnectButton UI Component

The ConnectButton UI component is a powerful and versatile tool from thirdweb's Connect SDK that is easy to implement into your [Chain] app.

All-in-One Solution: The ConnectButton offers thirdweb's suite of login, onboarding, and blockchain interaction capabilities in a single, customizable UI component.
Easy Implementation: Adding the ConnectButton to your Ethereum application is straightforward. With just a few lines of code, you can integrate this feature-rich UI component into your app.
Customizable Design: The component's appearance can be customized to match your application's branding and design requirements.
Cross-Platform Availability: The ConnectButton is available for multiple development platforms:
- React
- React Native
- Unity

To learn more about the ConnectButton UI component view our documentation:

thirdweb React SDK

A type-safe library to interact with any EVM-compatible blockchain in React applications.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to add the ConnectButton UI component from the thirdweb Connect SDK to your Ethereum app.

Step 1: Install and Configure thirdweb SDK

First, we'll need to install and configure the thirdweb SDK with our project. In this guide we will be covering how to add the ConnectButton to a React application built on Ethereum.

Install thirdweb with npm i thirdweb
Create a new file called client.ts and create a thirdweb client and provide it a thirdweb API key. In the example below we are storing our clientID as an environment variable in a .env file

import { createThirdwebClient } from "thirdweb";
 
export const client = createThirdwebClient({
  clientId: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_THIRDWEB_CLIENT_ID,
});

To learn more about how to create a thirdweb account and create an API key refer to this guide here.

Step 2: Add 'ConnectButton' UI Component

Now that we have installed and configured the thirdweb SDK lets add the ConnectButton UI component to our Ethereum app. All we need to do is import the component from thirdweb/react and provide it with the client we created earlier.

import { client } from "./client";
import { ConnectButton } from "thirdweb/react";
 
function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <ConnectButton client={client} />
    </div>
  );
}

Step 3: Configure 'ConnectButton' UI Component

We can configure the ConnectButton further and prompt our user to make sure they are on Ethereum chain. To do this we just need to add the chain prop and provide it with the chain. thirdweb has some predefined chains you can use within the SDK.

💡

If the chain you are looking to user is not a predefined chain, you can still define the chain with defineChain and provide it with 1.

import { client } from "./client";
import { ConnectButton } from "thirdweb/react";
import { defineChain }  from  "thirdweb";
 
function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <ConnectButton 
        client={client} 
        chain=defineChain("1")
      />
    </div>
  );
}

Provide a seamless user experience and offer features like social, email, or passkey logins you can configure your ConnectButton component with In-App Wallets. You can also easily implement Account Abstraction with Smart Wallets with just a few lines of code.

Step 4: Customize 'ConnectButton' UI component

Finally, let's customize the theme of the Connect Button to match your application's branding. You can change colors, fonts, and more to seamlessly integrate the button into your web3 app.

To get started, check out the Connect Button Playground in the documentation. Here, you can visually customize the button and see a live preview of your changes.

Once you're happy with your customizations, go to the "code" tab. You'll find a code snippet with all your changes applied to the ConnectButton component. Simply copy this code and paste it into your project.

Conclusion

In this guide, we covered how to add the ConnectButton UI component to your Ethereum app. We learned how to:

Install and configure the thirdweb SDK for our React app
Add a ConnectButton UI component
Configure the connect button to connect to Ethereum chain.
Customize the theme, colors, and fonts to match the branding of your app

The ConnectButton UI component provides a powerful and customizable way to add a connect wallet button to your Ethereum app. With options to connect to over 350+ wallets, allow web3 authentication methods, and ability to create seamless onboarding with Account Abstraction.

Happy building with thirdweb!