At a high level, it sounds similar to TokenScript in various ways. It supports pluggable extensions from external sources running on top of their base MetaMask wallet functionality. It sounds like it’s a way to scale/farm out work to implement EIPs to other parties, and dapps can request which ones to use (from external repos) without waiting for MetaMask to provide them, all these based on a EIP for permission/access to things like wallets etc. The plugins can annotate (and maybe) the display so possible displaying verification status of a dapp.
I haven’t checked it out yet but I like to look at TokenScript as encompassing a framework of thought around tokenization and making tokens and smart contracts work together — aka mashups and composition. On the other hand, Snaps (their name for the plugin system) doesn’t.
Snaps work at the dapp level, whereas TokenScript work on the token (and with a “holder” otherwise empty token, on a smart contract level). So token issues will still write dapps like they did, but with new EIPs available sooner rather than waiting for MetaMask — vast improvements there but no portable token/scripts or embedability, but someone can implement express of trust as a plug-in for dapps.
Will only know if this first impressions are correct after we play with it and see it play out. But I imagine it to scale out well because of the size of their user base.
That makes me think that maybe we should have a comm strategy with web3 folks, since potentially we can introduce it from tokenisation side without the mental baggage.