MetaMask (Tezos snap) wallet connect hangs during Beacon pairing

[EightRice]

Symptom

Connecting a wallet via MetaMask on Tezos networks opens the Beacon pairing deeplink to metamask.tezos.com/?type=tzip10&data=…, and the flow hangs there — the handshake back to the dapp never completes. The block-explorer link shown by the bridge page reports "account not valid".

Kukai and Temple connect fine over the same Beacon pairing (observed 2026-08-13 on production).

What has been ruled out

• Not a regression from the 2026-08 dependency merges (chore: OSV dependency audit script + resolutions for high/critical CVEs #957, feat: Update Discord invites and add support notification for logged-in users #946): no beacon-, taquito-, or walletconnect-transport packages changed in the lockfile across those merges. The MetaMask entry in the pairing UI comes from @ecadlabs/beacon-ui (via @taquito/beacon-wallet v24), unchanged since the Taquito v24 upgrade (feat: Upgrade Taquito SDK from v20 to v24.2 #947, March 2026).
• Bridge/snap not obviously dead upstream: metamask.tezos.com serves 200; airgap-it/tezos-metamask-snap had commits through Jan 2026 and has no open issues reporting this.

Suspected causes (unconfirmed)

1. Long-standing breakage in the Beacon P2P handshake between the bridge page / snap and the dapp, unnoticed due to low usage of the MetaMask path.
2. Stale local snap state (MetaMask → Snaps → remove "Tezos Wallet" → reconnect reinstalls it) — not yet ruled out.

Next steps when picked up

• Reproduce with browser console open on both the dapp and the bridge tab; capture where the pairing stalls (matrix transport vs. snap RPC).
• Test against a pre-2026-08 build to fully rule out regression.
• If broken upstream: file against the snap repo and consider hiding MetaMask from the Beacon wallet list until fixed, so users don't hit a dead-end connect flow.