John Light
Sep 7, 2018 · 1 min read

Nice reality check, thanks for the write up. I generally agree that there’s a lot left to be desired in the UX of mainnet Ethereum apps that are available. The many issues I’ve filed on GitHub in the last few months will attest to that!

A few comments after reading your post:

> It showed a command line, and without explaining anything it just started doing stuff there.

The first couples of lines when you run Parity should tell you some information about what’s about the happen. Note that Parity is now positioning their client as an “expert” client aimed at very experienced Ethereum users.

> Windows

Well there’s your first problem 🙃 Ok I’m half joking, the software should still work as expected if they claim to support that platform.

> But even as a cryptocurrency, it bothers me that I always need to check ethgasstation.info before sending a payment (I’ve sent at least 100 payments until now), because otherwise I won’t use the optimal fee.

Which wallet are you using? MetaMask uses a gas price estimation tool similar to ethgasstation, if that’s not what they’re actually using (if you use MetaMask try the Beta UI if you haven’t yet).

> I wish transactions sending value without data had a fixed fee, like Stellar.

Note that the Stellar fee also changes depending on the current load on the network. Users just might not notice it on a regular basis since the load on the network is currently not enough to trigger the fees to go higher in response to increased demand.

    John Light

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    https://lightco.in