Reflections on the new App

Just wanted to share my reflections on the new app so far. I know people have been posting comments and ideas in various threads and some things listed here have already been mentioned by others.

I’ll start off with a general design principle suggestion. Make everything as beginner and user-friendly as possible. Highlight basic features and hide advanced/power-user features. By doing this you make it easier for a new user to understand the App and that reduces the support load. Remember that only a fraction of people bothers to contact support or go on the forum. The majority just uninstall the app when encountering problems.

Wallet first
When you start the app, the first page should be the Wallet. The primary feature of Incognito is the network, it’s the cornerstone of everything. For a new user, it’s also the point of entry. The first thing you need to do is transfer funds into your account. This is also the only feature that can live entirely on its own if you just want to transfer or live in the incognito space.

If you’re thinking about power users that want to stay on top of price action, remember the last viewed page instead.

Send and Receive
Makes no sense whatsoever to hide this under a (…) more button in the corner. Should be two buttons between the amount and history. Remove the Buy and Sell buttons, they do not belong there unless you can buy PRV directly with your credit card.

Wallet or portfolio?
The icon indicates a portfolio. Shouldn’t provide be here as well, or is it being replaced by liquidity pools completely? Will fixed PRV-provide stay, and if so, is it part of Power, without hosting your own node? Pancakeswap splits it into its own “Earn” section. But they put liquidity under trade, so they kinda failed as well. :relaxed:

Trade
The market overview is part of trading. I would also “hide” the buy and sell for beginners. It’s not super intuitive how the buy/sell maker orders work and it’s might just generate more support. One solution would be to split trading and swapping. Like the market-button is where you also place advanced buy and sell orders and the middle button is just swap.

Swap
Can’t stress this enough. Always show rates and price impact! Protect the finances of new users, and make it harder to trade the wrong pairs by accident. Anything else is just pure negligence.

Spinners
The app is quite slow and it lacks process spinners. When you click search for example and start typing, it looks like there are no results and then after a couple of seconds things show up. Whenever there’s a query that takes more than 0.5s, you should show a spinner to indicate that it’s working. Regardless of whether it’s a button press, search query och just changing key-chains.

Please take this as constructive criticism!

15 Likes

I agree with all fredlee’s points, but wanted to emphasize this most important point that the WALLET area needs to be starting point when app opens, kept simple and indicate that “shielding” is the first step. I would add that this “shield” button should be accompanied by an available corresponding “unshield” button for friendliness–everyone wants to know both how to get into and out of a room or financial commitment they are about to enter. Nearly all other app functions depend on first bringing funds into the wallet via shield/unshield. This should be the first screen seen for emphasis after installing and requesting user to backup their keys and seed phrases.

4 Likes

Regarding BTC vs. pBTC or perhaps some other option:

We have already existing models for what happens when BTC is tokenized on another (non-BTC) blockchain. When BTC travels on Ethereum network, it is wrapped-BTC or WBTC. The reason it should be called WBTC on the Ethereum network is because there is a substantial difference between a “coin” and a “token” representing a coin on another network or just a “token” which is not the native coin of the network. BTC only exists on the Bitcoin network and blockchain and to suggest BTC exists as BTC in the incognito network and wallet is going to cause probably as much confusion as the original “pBTC” designation which seems a much clearer reminder that we are dealing with a 1:1 pegged “wrapped”/“private” token linked to BTC.

Admittedly, I can see how the “pBTC” raises eyebrows because it makes people think it is another different token or coin. I was wondering if the real problem with the “p” in front is people don’t think the whole word “private” Bitcoin. If one used a common adjective like “private” as in “private BTC”, at least here there is an indication one is not dealing with BTC itself but a tokenized version of it. This is also somewhat ambiguous in so far a person could still think it still is BTC but just private which is and is not technically true. This got me thinking of other ways besides “p” to indicate what we have in the incognito wallet is NOT identical to BTC, but somehow still strongly/trustlessly BTC. I notice in the wallet, the orginal BTC icon (the white “B” on gold) and the other original coin icons commonly used. What if Incognito Wallet simply CHANGED the icon colors of those original coins to black and white Incognito variations of those icons. If you continued to use the BTC coin letters but changed the icon to a black circle with a white “B” or the special bitcoin “B” in white on a black background, users would be reminded this is an incognito Bitcoin, not the usual BTC. All the other icons for various coins could have similar Black circle backgrounds to reinforce the Incognito branding and tokenization.

Also, since the names of the coins are spelled in small font underneath each symbol (“BTC” above then word “Bitcoin” under), couldn’t the app also simply type out instead of “Bitcoin” something like: “Incognito Bitcoin” or “Private Bitcoin” or “Shielded Bitcoin” and use that same adjective repeatedly for all other coins (i.e. “shielded ETH”, “shielded XMR”(which is like double shielded now, etc.) on other networks that are tokenized in Incognito. In this way, I at least would feel okay with continued use of the “BTC” as the symbol used in the Incognito wallet and network since a user is reminded that only tokens or representations of BTC exist on the Incognito network, not the original BTC on the bitcoin blockchain. Incognito BTC (with greater privacy features) is trying to be different from the original BTC and also the same as BTC (at least in terms of value) and this is a difficult balance to maintain to the user but both should be made clear.

The reason I worry about this is because there have been and will be networks and wallets out there that “claim” and display on their app screens that a wallet actually contains “BTC” when the whole app and wallet is a scam. Scams and scam apps are defined precisely by confusing the representations of gold, usd or BTC with the original real gold, usd or BTC. Incognito should affirm the positive value of privacy without the appearance or even a hint of confusing representations of coins with the coins themselves no matter how convenient and easy such confusion is for an end user.

2 Likes

Well, to be fair, the first thing ever explained about the Incognito network, literally at the top of the website is this…

Screen Shot 2022-01-03 at 10.21.21

So to start with, the website and app should use the same terminology.

What the team might want to emphasize by not using “p” everywhere is that these are pegged 1:1 coins and they should not have their own rates or listings on coinmarketcap etc. On a CEX you never own the true coins either, but they are always treated like it.

While Privacy is a good annotation, pBTC may not be needed (pBTC actually already exists in the pTokens space)? As @Socrates suggests, altering the icons a bit might be a good idea. Not sure about turning every coin black and white tho since the whole market list will lose color. Maybe it’s possible to incorporate the Incognito ring around them? I haven’t tested the idea, it might look horrible. :relaxed:

1 Like

@alias Regarding #3 and #4, I will play devil’s advocate a bit only in hopes that these thoughts lead to improvements.

#3 I think developers have “missed” the difference between newbies and experienced traders. It is clear that this app is primarily a pdex and secondarily a wallet given how the wallet functions have been pushed to the sidelines. While I understand an app can try to do both be a wallet and a pdex, I would still hope you want to do this in a balanced way that both invites and encourages newbies to onboard and to offer advanced traders as many features as you can. Right now, I think the app will discourage and confuse newbies and is more focused on traders.

For example, here is a newbies initial experience of the first three menu icons across the bottom of the app “markets”, “wallet” and “trade” icons. If I tap on markets, I see a near similar list of coins that I see when I tap on wallet. Then let’s say I tap on BTC under markets, then I go automatically to the “trade” (buy, sell, swap) screen (the center menu icon. But when I tap on “wallet” and also see a list of coins and I tap on BTC again and then I see the BUY SELL buttons and tap on BUY, I AGAIN automatically go to the TRADE screen (but this time with two taps instead of one tap from Markets. But then a newbie will tap on the Trade icon in bottom center and again with one tap is sent to trade screen. It seems like three different menu icons along the bottom “markets”, “Wallet” and “trade” all lead to the same “trade” screen (with Buy Sell Swap across the top). This is what I mean when I say the app is clearly focused on “traders”, not simply someone who uses a wallet to send and receive (which is now several taps away to find the “send” and “receive” functions).

Now, let’s look at the “wallet” menu icon from the beginner persepctive. In comparison with many other bitcoin wallets, what one expects to see under “wallet” are the most basic functions of “send” and “receive” and one’s balance and of course in this case since Incognito is UNIQUE, one should see a “Shield” and an “Unshield”. Basic wallet functions are not captured clearly in one place and the “pools” and “rewards” functions are not standard features of wallets that newbies would initially expect.

Observation 1: A wallet that gives me a big “shield” button but doesn’t give me or show me upfront how to “Unshield” is not going to be particularly “friendly” to a newbie. I having used the old app, of course, know that if I want to unshield, I do so from the “send” screen(the “send” button is not visible on the initial wallet screen) and I send to an non-incognito address (but newbies will not know this or be able to figure it out intuitively).

I would expect when tapping on “wallet” icon to see on the first screen clear “send” “receive” buttons as well as both “shield” and “unshield” buttons and then below that a list of my coins with their balances, but not just one big “shield” button. We all understand wallets to be “inputs” and “outputs”, but this wallet on the first screen just shows a way to input, not output (which potentially raises trust issues for some). For newbies, I would think we want that wallet part of the app as clear and organized and intuitive as possible. I am not sure it is there yet. Given that the TRADE functions are clearly highlighted now with TRADE in the center and the markets all leading to the trade screen, for beginners, I would like to see a clear simple easy to use wallet without investing tools (“pools and rewards” and trading tools mixed into that wallet area). I would like to get to that “send” screen which happily remains like in the old app (not the send button) in less than three taps in the wallet. For beginners, I really think the wallet should clarify the difference between “shield/unshield” functions and “send/receive” functions by having all these button on one screen upfront as soon as one taps on wallet. Then below those buttons or on next screen after tapping on one of the buttons comes the list of coins in my wallet with their balances. In short, the wallet seems overrun with trading functions which should be elsewhere under a “trade” or “markets” or even in the “MORE” icon area. “Pools” and “Rewards” could be under “more” icon for a simpler wallet interface just like you left the “provide” function under the “more” icon.

A wallet screen with a single “Shield” button is potentially unfriendly.
A wallet screen where I tap on a coin, BTC for example, and am pushed to “BUY” “SELL” buttons RATHER THAN the “SEND/RECEIVE” screen (or buttons) is potentially unfriendly to those who are not primarily “traders” particularly when there are two other ways to easily reach the “buy/sell” trade screen.

The best wallets out there are simple and intuitive and not trying to encourage “trading” or have trading tools and extra investing options mixed in. So, my main point is: this new app seems to be leaving behind the beginner wallet user who needs something really simple because it emphasizes the “trading” functions. For example, this new app screen looks similar to the Ledger Live mobile app for android, but when tapping in center arrows icon in Ledger live, I see “send” “receive” “Buy/Sell” and “Swap” which is a more balanced approach. Incognito should have a single pop up when tapping on center arrows that displays “Shield”, “Unshield”, “Send”, “Receive”, “Buy/Sell” and “Swap” in one place.

I understand the app and incognito pdex is a wonderful attraction and should be encouraged, but presumably the app wants to draw in new beginning users as well and I think that is the potential weakness as it stands now.

7 Likes

I understand the rollout for pDex3, but after opening up the totally new app today, I can’t help but wonder – Why?

We spent a year towards the beginning of workshopping that app, the layout, design, the buttons, everything, and with the help of the community, got it to a point where it was simpler and more intuitive, looked good, etc.

But this new version just went backwards. It’s like a whole new world but mostly I can’t stop asking myself – Why?

What benefits came with changing the entire layout? A lot of work must have gone into designing a whole new app but for what purpose?

Not trying to be disrespectful here… I just am genuinely confused. And feel a bit disoriented trying to figure out where everything is.

One suggestion at the moment… Under “Wallet”, it doesnt actually show you anywhere on the screen which wallet you currently are in. For a node owner like myself, with over a dozen wallets - this is very confusing. It should say clear on the wallet page the name of the wallet that is currently open. And the “key” symbol on the top right doesn’t intuitively refer to “wallet.” So I didn’t know where to go at first to change between wallets.

5 Likes

The app looks a lot nicer, but functionally, I’m struggling. Why Buy, Sell, and Swap? Why not the single Trade/Swap screen? It’s a lot more work now to figure out what pricing I’m getting too - If I want to buy BTC, I have to do math to figure out the price I’m getting (when I used to see the DAI / BTC price at 47,891.24 or whatever).

Let’s say I want to buy BTC with USDT… If I understand correctly (not sure I do) Buy/Sell have zero fees, but are only for PRV - of course I don’t know the PRV to USD conversion (not shown on the trade screen, so more math)… So I think I can buy PRV with USDT, then buy BTC with the PRV I just bought, and this avoids fees.

…Or I can Swap USDT for BTC directly, but there are trading fees (a lot higher than before this update). It’s now a PRV fee and a fee in USDT or BTC as well… why do buy/sell trades for prv at no cost and raise the swap fees? why not just do everything through swap with fees somewhere in the middle?

Also I miss the seeing the liquidity on the trade screen - as well as trade history.

Am I blind or is there no rate on the swap page? It’s like you want users to do bad trades by mistake.

IMO: Balance should be under or above the token you pick not at the bottom in the summary. The rate should be shown (taking slippage into account). Price impact should be clearly visible to indicate liquidity problems in the trade you’re about to make.

I get a general feeling that this project is very tech- and dev-focused at the moment. You’re so far into this project now and you’re trying to push public interest (with new web and trying to get coinmarketcap listing) which means you’ve lost the early days of developer freedom. You need to start treating it as a service critical system and stop the big disruptive changes. When money is involved, people get very stressed when things go wrong. Worst case it’s someone’s life savings (like we have seen threads on this forum before). Upset people tend to share a lot of their negativity and it’s bad for the future of the project.

7 Likes

hey @Socrates @Mike_Despo @fredlee and @yoo, thanks so much for your thoughtful responses, and sorry for my late reply - have been out of the office.

moving all app-related posts here so we can collect all feedback and work on improvements. will consult with the team and put some proper thought into a reply, please bear with us a little.

It’d be great if there was a cost per unit shown between Balance and Fee. Even better if there was also an option to show the total cost (as a whole and per unit) in major currencies (USD, EUR and please AUD for us Aussies).

Right now users have to calculate this information manually. It’s easy when a stablecoin is one side of the trade but if you’re doing say XMR to BTC its a bit more of a pain in the proverbial buttocks. Having the info will make things more seamless from a trading perspective.

7 Likes

Incognito Verified Coins not showing on the New pDEX and the price of the coins created on incognito not showing as well!

I’ve pointed this to entire @Support Team more than three weeks ago, they promised to rectify the error but it’s still remains the same at the launch of the new app which supposed not to be so! What’s really happening @duc and the Dev Team Members?

In actual facts, this is given me concern about people that we are leading to install incognito because they want to trade our coin. What do you want us to tell them when they buy the coin and it doesn’t show the value according to what they bought in their wallet while the other coins is showing the price. That will be passing a bad signal that maybe the coins created on incognito app are not authentic and relevant.

Please, let us know if Incognito is safe for creating and minting of useful coins!

Waiting for quick response because we are planning on launching out as we move to the new year in our Fishbelly Republic Crypto Community!

FBY Rights Coin not showing on pDex. The value of the coin not showing on the wallet for investors to know the value of the FBY Rights they bought or wish to buy!

Well done @Incognito Team on the new pDEX v3 so far!

I agree with @KingOfCrypto - it’s difficult to sell to our investors when there’s no price attached to the tokens.

I would very much like to read an answer to KingofCrypto’s question as well, as I believe many others share similar concerns.

1 Like

Speaking about price feeds, is the Incognito Core Dev team working on a partnership with an oracle ( e.g Chainlink) to have more accurate and verified price data in the app?

3 Likes

also moving your comments here for visibility @SPAddict25, @KingOfCrypto, @Linnovations and @Intelespion. thanks, and please forgive the late response.

if anyone else reading this has any feedback at all, please post your thoughts here - we’re really keen to hear them.

1 Like

This PLEASE, asap.

Please default to 1 coin on the swap screen (for the top coin, the one you are trading for the other) or if you have less than 1 coin, the total of that coin you have (this is the way it worked in the old app).

Please don’t reset “everything” if I change the second coin (the coin I want to trade for).

Currently I have to choose the coin I want to trade with and I put 1 in for the quantity. Next I would like to change the slippage percentage (have to tap “Advanced”) – I will almost always want to change that to 0.2%. Then I change the target coin (the one I want to trade for, or “buy”). When I change the target coin, everything resets. I lose the quantity of the coins I want to trade with (1) [it goes blank] and the slippage percentage resets to 1.

3 Likes

Infact, I can’t say my own can be categorized as reflection of the new app because what I complained about has been like that since the time of the old app and the Devs refused to do something about it till they rolled out new app!

I’ve gotten my community members to install incognito but failure to get the price feed for our coin stop us from using the app for our about to start pre-sale!

We have a lot of people that are new to crypto and I can’t lead them to what will get them discouraged at the early stage!

We have to decide to use another crypto platform for the presale as it’s obvious that up till now there’s nothing done to the complaint.

Even up till now I have not gotten where they put Add Liquidity Button inside the new app!

Hi folks, thanks for your feedback regarding how we can improve our product.

We are considering all of your feedback. In the next release, we will update the app based on the following comments (the rest we will consider and update in the future versions):

We really appreciate the time you took to share your feedback!!!

10 Likes

I would be glad if you add “the chosen trade path” in Swap page. @hieutran

3 Likes

That’s a good idea. It can help you understand why trades get very bad rates, because a trade step with low liquidity is needed.

1 Like

Thanks for the summary @hieutran.

Just curious, if the price feeds are not coming from a 3rd party trusted oracle, where are the prices being derived from?

Can you please be a little more transparent on what is happening behind the scenes to calculate prices?
Is it via API from CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko?

1 Like