Some thoughts from a new guy on BTS and getting wider adoption

[llildur]

It's a good idea ppl are not ready to deal with all this info at first glance, one thing i like from poloniex is that the section balances display the usd/btc conversion for your holdings, those little details provide comfort and a sense of security to the end user, we must mimic the existing systems in order to achieve more attention from the average joe, take a look at the last 6 min of the speach of Andreas A. at  the Blockchain Africa Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMEOKDVXlUo very instructive and inspirational IMO, simplicity is an strong point to consider.

[hellobitshares]

So, I feel a bit stupid, but I just had a look at OpenLedger and the idea of Basic Mode / Trading Mode is already there!

[hellobitshares]

Thanks for the replies guys!

You've basically got my ideas right. I don't think you'd want a bunch of token creators forking the GUI to make their own wallets because that's a recipe for a bunch of wallets that diverge code-wise, which could degrade the quality perception of the ecosystem if they are poorly written or not maintained.

To distill my long post a bit:

Give people a friendly introduction to BitShares. To do this, in the GUI show a nice big toggle for switching between "WALLET" (aka friendly) and "TRADING" (the DEX) modes. Default to "WALLET" mode, with a simple pretty UI. Persist the user's mode choice so they see the view they like on each startup. Let users switch freely between modes.

Allow the Friendly wallet mode to be defaulted to other currencies (e.g. COFFEE), not just BTS/bitUSD. So, the core GUI app is largely the same just with a Friendly home page basically.

So these would just different views of the same system. Some contrived config examples to illustrate.

For the official distribution, ship it with a config, something like this:
[settings]
first_start = FRIENDLY_MODE
default_currency = BTS

For the COFFEE example:
[settings]
first_start = FRIENDLY_MODE
default_currency = COFFEE

This let's token creators have their own official wallet, they get to look techie and awesome and just leverage the existing wallet to give their audience the currency view they desire.

It's a win-win -- token creators can advertise and bring folks into the system, they get to look clever by providing a wallet but don't have to fork the GUI or do anything complex. BitShares wins too, by bringing more people into the ecosystem and allowing them to get deeper into trading if they wish.

For transparency, the GUI should not try to conceal the underlying technology because we want end users to know what's powering the tech, increasing network effect and awareness of the BitShares ecosystem.

Look forward to chatting more with yall!

Cheers,

 Russ / hellobitshares

[Thom]

the code is free to use, if you know css/html you could probably create your own wallet version tailored to your needs

In general yes, but in practice it's considerably more complex than that. It requires substantial knowledge with javascript, ReactJS, Node etc. HTML and CSS are also essential but knowledge of those two are not enough to achieve what @hellobitshares described.

[fav]

the code is free to use, if you know css/html you could probably create your own wallet version tailored to your needs

[Thom]

Welcome to the BitShares ecosystem!

Those are some of good ideas sir, particularly the idea of coupling UIAs with a simple wallet. Having it be as easy as tweaking a config file to setup that universal wallet is also an awesome concept.

I don't recall the details off the top of my head, but a simple vs trade view was added fairly recently to the UI, and it has been well received.

I don't know how easy it would be to create what we call a "light wallet" to highlight or focus on a specific asset (or assetS) using a config file, but it's a very interesting idea I hope @svk will comment on.

Thanks for sharing, and once again - welcome aboard.

PS - It occurs to me that with UIAs and your mentioning of how quickly you find the rabbit hole can get deep, that is especially true of UIAs. Thus to keep your idea effective I think you have to split USERS of the UIAs to which this simple wallet is targeting away from CREATORS of those tokens. To actually create the tokens requires deeper knowledge and understanding than would fit well with the user wallet.

[hellobitshares]

First off, holy cow, BitShares is really cool. I can't state this strongly enough!

I've been following crypto currency for some time, but the recent gold rush got me interested again, and I basically stumbled into BitShares. I've been building a little portfolio of sorts, looking for places to invest where I think there's bargains to be had. I'm not a professional investor but to me BitShares seems undervalued given the huge potential and the awesome power I see here.

At first I didn't know anything about the DEX, I just bought some BTS to hold it. Then I learned about the DEX and transfered my BTS in. I don't remember exactly where I learned of BitShares, but it was probably either when I discovered Steemit or perhaps just from mentions on bitcointalk (I know, I know).

The DEX....wow.....is just really fascinating and elegant. I'm still struggling to understand everything (esp. the mechanics of BTS/BitUSD, shorting and the like). This is not due to a shortage of information about it, conversely there's just so much to absorb.

I wanted to offer some (hopefully) fresh perspective to the community about how BitShares looks to a new guy, and thought that might yield some useful ideas or discussion given the tepid state of things.

I think that taking BitShares to many more people and having them adopt it in a lasting way may require some level of simplification (not of the underlying tech, just of the UX esp. for newbies), and yeah low trading volume has been pretty offputting too.

As I have been looking around the web to absorb everything I can about BTS, one problem I see is that things get technical very quickly, and even though I have an appetite for the technology it gets to be a bit much pretty fast. Steemit seems to suffer from the same problem, one starts reading about it and immediately gets bogged down in a mountain of details written by well-meaning enthusiasts. In the case of Steemit, I don't want to learn a new economic paradigm for a week before I jump in and just write a damn blog post. The world isn't ready for a blogging platform that requires understanding the interplay between several alternative currencies just to use it. Yes, the platform rewards content and curation, but if I'm just itching to blog, I'll revert to a familiar paradigm instead.

In the case of BTS, these documents are well-intentioned pieces written by BTS enthusiasts, but it's basically just a firehose of information. (These docs are invaluable too, I'm not knocking their utility at all).

I think one really nice "gateway" introduction to BTS might just be as using it for a store of value. Yes, it's capable of so so so much more, but the amazing capabilities of the DEX muddies the message very quickly. And a store of value is not to be undermined, just look at the stickiness of bitcoin! BTC is kinda mediocre at this point compared to many other amazing new technologies it inspired, yet it persists because it's stable and it stores value.

Another difficulty has been trying to get a better handle on the trading pairs on the DEX. For me, it's been kinda difficult to even figure out if I'm going to profit or lose from a given trade given the new (to me) units of trade, esp if I make one trade against bitUSD and another against BTS. The fluctuating USD/bitUSD, BTS/bitUSD and so on gets to be complex very quickly. I also see great power and potential in this technology, it's beautiful really. Like every speculator, one wants to buy low and sell higher (well, for BTS itself I plan to eventually just hodl), but trying to do this has been a bit kafkaesque as I try to figure out how BTS is trading in relation to the outside economy and whether I'm ultimately "making money".

So, idea number one is BTS could consider a "dumb simple" facade for the wallet that just emphasizes using it as a store of value, for BTS or bitUSD or both. "Here's how much BTS/bitUSD you have. You can move it in and out of your account with these buttons." This dumb simple wallet UI can provide a big friendly toggle (WALLET MODE / TRADING MODE), just like a calculator has a basic mode than can be toggled to scientific mode, exposing all of the most elegant and powerful operations available. And I think a lot of people would wind up using TRADING mode through discovery, but those who toggle it on and find it scary can toggle back to the simple friendly wallet and relax. These users of the simple friendly wallet would nonetheless bring value and liquidity to the markets, and many would eventually warm up to the DEX.

When an intrepid user switches from WALLET to TRADING they should have a nice link to some great documentation about the trading platform, and the ability to toggle back to the simple friendly mode.

I saw recent discussions about needing new features for parity with other trading systems, and I think this is great, but also might be missing the need for simplicity and the potential that simplicity can provide.

Idea number two: Expanding on the "simple wallet as a store of value" use case to the broader capability of custom token/currency creation on BitShares (another wow! for me), I think the project could consider building a small toolkit for BTS-based token/currency creators. What this toolkit would provide is, just like the dumb simple friendly wallet, would allow token creators to release a small re-bundling of the BitShares wallet that defaults to their chosen currency. This token-specific wallet would be analogous to friendly wallet, just would show the specific token instead of BTS/bitUSD. Users would be able expand the token-specific wallet to show all the raw power of the DEX too, so these specific-token wallets would be another entry point for new users of the ecosystem.

To pick an example I saw on the DEX, I noticed there's a COFFEE token. What if the creator of the COFFEE token could, with minor changes, just distribute the standard wallet with a small config file telling it to start up in Friendly Wallet Mode with a view of that specific token? I think this would be amazing. The users get the "store of value" use case for the token they want to use. This would further expand the platform's adoption by providing a lower barrier to entry for those not wanting to learn an entirely new economic system. Those people who want to use crypto but mostly just to buy some COFFEE with a hip token, but perhaps don't want to reinvent the financial world right now. They want lattes.

I think these two ideas would give consumers direct access to the BitShares ecosystem without them needing to worry too much. Right now the details overwhelm.

I'd picture this custom-token version of the wallet to have features allowing the user to access the full features of the trading system, and if they get scared, just toggle back to super happy friendly "I just want to buy" coffee mode.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I look forward to being a part of the community!

Cheers,

hellobitshares