Thread by @bmann

Getting started with #walletconf -- UX discussions around wallets and crypto broadly.

First up, @tomcreighton kicking off. Where does UX come into the thinking around crypto? "What is the UX of TCP/IP?"

My question: how do you think about design when you are building lower level lego blocks vs. lego kits?

I'm thinking perhaps about open source components that have developers as the "end user".

Discussion about frictions -- like a "login" button -- even though web3 might automatically have your account details.

And then the fact that that is actually a "bug" and we need to balance privacy more broadly. More on this from @danfinlay from MetaMask later.

I'm uncomfortable with a lot of the talk about "hiding things from users". How much do we need to educate people that they are participating in a decentralized system, in an open source system?

Should we "just" be building apps or do we have a responsibility to build a movement?

From MetaMask, @danfinlay - “I’m in it for Star Trek”, not about balances and logins.

“Cryptoeconomics has some tools to help us collaborate in new ways”

Being a wallet dev is terrifying and hard. @danfinlay -- you're holding people's money and identity. So many other things -- like vetting tokens -- which need to be pushed out to community solutions.

For users, there is a certain "responsibility of joining the decentralized web" @danfinlay -- we do have to have people take it seriously, be educated.

Joke about the hard work of @MyCrypto and their 18 page click through.

(yes, this is what I was thinking)

Web3 breaking change for privacy - login per site.

Sites request login, network, selective disclosure, additional info.

Dan asks: are worried about breaking user space now?

@ricburton - “no one is using dapps now, maybe 30K DAUs - let’s break it now for the next billion”

Clapping! 🙌

Next up: @MyCrypto - rewriting whole interface, desktop apps, developer tools.

All open source, MIT license.

Speaking of breaking changes, @MyCrypto is going to deprecate private keys on the web.

Use MetaMask, Parity Signer, or hardware wallets.

There WILL be user complaints, but we need to change behaviour.

Going back to @tomcreighton’s product vs. utility.

@MyCrypto Rather than developing an advantage, developing a standard, making sure everyone is doing the right thing.

Just got a link to the livestream watch.livemedia.biz/register/thund…

I should probably get back to tagging these as #walletconf

Feel free to feed me questions.

Wrap up of @mycrypto presentation - balance between tool vs. product, metrics, analytics. QA - lots of discussion of NOT gathering analytics to respect privacy. #walletconf

Next up: @ricburton from @balance_io going back to hearing about Ethereum and working with the early team & design mockups #walletconf

Don’t think of @balance_io as a wallet, it’s a bank for the open financial system. #walletconf

Richard @ricburton is starting to talk to apps & protocols about rewarding the UI layer, so client apps like wallets can compete to have great experiences #walletconf

To date, “wallets have been charity projects that get all the flack and none of the revenue”. Incentives will drive competition and huge value so more can be invested in great design & UX @ricburton (without having to do a token sale) #walletconf

Presentation of @WalletConnect, open source system for logging in using mobile apps for logins. Like Bluetooth logo, users understand the pattern, that just works between apps. walletconnect.org #walletconf

I asked if there is a “standard” for incenting wallet / client UIs. @ricburton says No, the Cosmos guys suggested that they track transactions and reward clients. Wants @balance_io to be extremely profitable with free cash flows to invest in great UX & design #walletconf

Killer quote @ricburton about supporting devs in developing countries “Exporting your thoughts through code is much easier than exporting products”

I’m excited about crypto value to the developing world that can make apps locally for their countries and get paid.

#walletconf

Passing the mike around the room getting to know everyone, then a break for lunch.

I pitched about how we can pool funds to get community, open source infrastructure funded. In particular - let’s raise funds for @quickblocks to get open sourced (a reverse bounty?)

#walletconf

Back from lunch, @avsa ranting about the terrible user experience & training we are doing today around private keys #walletconf

Let’s use “context specific, etherless accounts”. Use keys as auth tokens, sign messages, ask permission. #walletconf

ERC725 Proxy Identity covers a lot of this eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-725 @avsa #walletconf

I am hearing a lot from @avsa that sounds identical to OpenID. I think we need to learn from previous web2 attempts & evolve / change things. This Wired article has some OpenID failure background wired.com/2011/01/openid… #walletconf

Lots of additional ERCs coming in the next couple of days from @avsa, here's a code link to the Status repo github.com/status-im/cont…

Now moving to QA

#walletconf

Now @PhABCD, met with @avsa ahead of time as they ended up with very similar design patterns. Focused on backend smart contract design, called Ethereum Smart Accounts #walletconf

My fave mobile app wallet, @vikmeup from @TrustWalletApp. Focusing on building a product - no user choices! #walletconf

Sharing that TrustWallet Android usage is growing, which likely means growth outside of rich early adopters with iPhones #walletconf

Victor @vikmeup is covering a ton of ground. Open source, community management support. Lots of open source tools, token directory, push notifications github.com/TrustWallet/tr… #walletconf

The @toshi team talks about the hackiness of Web3 #walletconf

Suggesting that we work together on injecting web3 on demand, use EthereumProviderAPI. On to “signature wars” #walletconf

eth_signedTypeData was designed for user readable data. Was added to MetaMask without something like vendor prefixes.

Version in MM is outdated, forces other dapp browsers to be bug-compatible.

#walletconf

Thoughts on OGP-like app manifest / metadata.

Make dapps accessible over IPFS.

#walletconf

Next up @ethstatus - chat built on Whisper, Wallet, and dapp browser. UX focused presentation #walletconf

We are in transition from web2 to web3, lots of patterns from web2 still being used, lots of new, incomprehensible language @ethstatus #walletconf

Collecting data? Decentralized, but then plug-in Mixpanel???? Designed a non-dark-pattern to opt-in & only for private beta.

Why? No dapp analytics, data is on chain, not easy to get. @Iiterature “who is building mixpanel for dapps?”

@ethstatus #walletconf

Can we work together on design patterns? Material Design for Dapps? Open sharing of user research? @ethstatus #walletconf

Talking about joint user research especially for developing world - can @ethstatus work with @Right_Mesh, others to gather best practices #walletconf

On to @lyricalpolymath who authored web3 design principles. Starts with talking about terrible UX of the DAO 2.5yrs ago. Better now, how much better in 2.5yrs from now. #walletconf

"Getting data out of Ethereum is really, really hard. And frontend developers shouldn't have to think about it" @lrettig #walletconf

The reason that Web2 came so far is availability of things like Parse & Heroku which takes care of the backend for you. Running a whole node & syncing it is way too hard. @lrettig #walletconf

Problem 2: "Relying on too many centralized providers" -- Etherscan, INFURA. Need something decentralized and sustainable. @lrettig #walletconf

Problem 3: "We need better incentives for running full nodes." - not an app dev problem per se, but another centralization issue. Nodes dropped from ~30K to ~17K. There's an EIP908 for this eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-908

Proposal - ODIN, runs on top of a full node, marginal cost is minor. Puts data into a DB, shares it with a decentralized ODIN data cloud. @lrettig #walletconf

Next steps: open source community, Github, etc. etc. - prototype working in weeks not months, @quickblocks is a data provider already working on this @lrettig #walletconf

Can we get to GraphQL queries of Ethereum data? This is bigger than Ethereum - other chains. @lrettig #walletconf

Two final thoughts:

1/ Make mining great again: Proof of Data. You're immediately providing value.

2/ Bitcoin decentralized value, Ethereum decentralized applications, Odin will decentralize data.

Go to github.com/ethod

@lrettig #walletconf

Remote presenter, Martin @mhswende: a new wallet implemented by the Geth team from the Ethereum Foundation, Clef "a reasonably secure wallet"

#walletconf

Find out more about Clef in the geth repo github.com/ethereum/go-et…

Question really is, how can we work on core things like this together, how can wallet clients re-use and connect, on web, on mobile.

#walletconf

"Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that could turn your phone into a hardware wallet?"@MaciejHirsz - the Parity Signer is a React Native app, cryptographic pieces are written in Rust. No data, uses camera & screen.

Open source github.com/paritytech/par…

#walletconf

Works with @MyCrypto, check out the walk through on the wiki wiki.parity.io/Parity-Signer-…

#walletconf

Remote presenter, Jordan @ffloat Frame - cross platform Ethereum provider that lets you use standalone signers such as Ledger or Trezor.

github.com/floating/frame

#walletconf

Frame is cross platform - macOS, Windows, Linux. Sits in your menubar. Currently download from Github and run from command line.

Pre-built apps and browser extension coming. Managing local full nodes.

@ffloat #walletconf

Back from dinner, @somemikesena of @uport_me talking about designing identity systems. We need to go from "keypairs to people", and we should work on standards.

#walletconf

"There will be more than one identity model" - can we share the use cases and work on standards together? Can I be "me" everywhere?

@somemikesena #walletconf

Improved, public, on-chain features, plus new, private off-chain features @somemikesena #walletconf

Have two EIPs which summarize their work #erc780 github.com/ethereum/EIPs/… #erc1056 github.com/ethereum/EIPs/…

@somemikesena #walletconf

QA long discussion on “simple” identity vs GDPR & state level identity which has to be done in such a way that it can’t be correlated.

I am sympathetic to need for a “hello world” simple identity, but also to train beginning devs on proper identity.

@somemikesena #walletconf

Now @jeremyrwelch from @CasaHODL - premium HODLr software. Growing team, adding Ethereum support. #walletconf

Live on Bitcoin mainnet today. Will support other chains including Ethereum later this year. @jeremyrwelch @CasaHODL #walletconf

Luis @licuende presenting Radspec, a safe alternative to natspec, to make Ethereum transactions human readable #walletconf

Instead of ETH accounts, what if you use a Personal DAO as your identity? @AragonProject can serve as this.

Multi-sig signing with yourself across devices for differential access.

@licuende #walletconf

QA around radspec, need to think multilingual.

I brought up @pabloduboue’s demo of grammar framework for solidity code to English / Chinese / Spanish — although just a subset.

@licuende #walletconf

Graphical smart contracts came up at the @balance_io, here’s @danfinlay’s intern medium.com/pennblockchain… #walletconf

It’s past midnight & I have any early flight. I should be exhausted, but I’m energized.

It was a great day at #walletconf, where a lot of discussions really gelled.

The Ethereum community is in great shape. So much left to #buidl, but a great team to get to work.

So that’s the end of this 15 hour thread. Catch you all with the other magicians - ethereum-magicians.org, and stay tuned for EthCamp templates, plus #walletconf videos & presentations

Ok! There is a Working Groups category on Eth Magicians, and UX is the first one. Join us - ethereum-magicians.org/c/working-grou… #walletconf