AZERO.dev wallet improvements

Originally authored by Piotr Moczurad

We are happy to announce that we have been working on improving the user experience in the azero.dev wallet and today we are able to share some of the results. The overarching goal was to make the user interface more straightforward and eliminate common sources of confusion.

Nomination pools rewards UI fixes

The wallet now correctly displays the number of claimable rewards in the Staking->Accounts->Pooled view. Note that the fix is purely on the UI side, the actual rewards were calculated correctly.

UX for finalization

This change comes in four parts:

a) The Network->Explorer page is now displaying information about whether a block is finalized in the recent blocks list. Finalized blocks will now have a green checkmark next to them.

b) The Network->Explorer now contains the information about the highest finalized block (‘Finalized’), next to the highest produced block (‘Best’). Note that this is presented through the lens of a node your wallet is connected to (you can check that in the top-left corner of the page).

c) When inspecting a block in the block explorer, you will now see a warning if you’re looking at a non-finalized block.

d) When making a transaction, you will now see a ‘finalized’ pop-up when the block it is part of becomes finalized. Note that this is a two-step process: first, the block gets produced and later finalized.

Staking pages tailored to Aleph Zero election system

The Staking->Overview page no longer contains the ‘Active’ and ‘Waiting’ tabs: in Aleph Zero all not suspended validators are active and therefore take turns in the consensus. The ‘Active/Waiting’ split was introducing a misconception that only the few nodes in the Session Committee are actively validating, which is simply not the case. Unless a validator node is suspended, it is earning rewards and being active. The page now also displays relevant information next to the validator name in the list, including its own stake and other stake.

Note that the blue arrow icon is gone: its meaning was confusing and not particularly relevant to the Aleph Zero chain: since the admissions on Mainnet are permissionless, you can be sure that if a validator node has applied, it will start validating with the beginning of the next era.

The Staking->Targets page now contains only ‘Currently elected’ and ‘With identity’ toggles. The rest of them was causing some of the validators to be hidden by default and therefore were confusing to the nominators.

We hope that those fixes will make the experience of validating and nominating on Aleph Zero more enjoyable!

This article was originally published on the Aleph Zero blog on December 23rd, 2022. Read the original entry here.