Emeris — The Road to Public Launch
Since the launch of Emeris Beta in September 2021, we’ve been hard at work. In fact, many new features and general improvements are almost ready to be rolled out, but we don’t want to rush things. We want to deliver a professional product with a truly superlative user experience — and we need a few more months to get there. To ensure that the platform is stable enough to lift the Beta label and go public, we’re announcing a new public launch window of Spring 2022.
Not to worry, though! There will be plenty happening on Emeris before then! Starting in January, we will begin releasing major upgrades on Emeris Beta, which we believe will bring a lot of value to users of the Interchain. Read on to find out more!
The Emeris Mission: Bringing the Best of the Internet of Blockchains to the Masses
The Internet of Blockchains is already here. Every week, new chains are launching and connecting through interoperability protocols like IBC. These are exciting times for crypto users, and opportunities are plenty. Yet, with this cross-chain innovation, new UX and UI challenges must be addressed if the Interchain is to reach its full potential. That’s what Emeris is all about.
The Internet of Blockchains deserves first-class, professional-looking interfaces. That’s what we’re building with Emeris. Our long-term goal is to become one of the reference interfaces of the Internet of Blockchains, but, in the short term, we will mainly focus on providing a professional cross-chain dashboard for the Cosmos ecosystem (and beyond). Specifically, we will focus on the following areas:
- Portfolio visualization: As assets are starting to move around from blockchain to blockchain via interoperability protocols, it’s becoming harder and harder for users to keep track of their holdings. One of Emeris’ core focus areas is to provide a clear overview of users’ digital asset holdings across all supported chains, as well as useful metrics and data to give a clear picture of their portfolio performance.
- Digital asset management: Emeris will come with all the basic features that crypto users have come to expect, like asset transfers (including cross-chain transfers), staking (when applicable), and swapping. Better yet, the swapping feature will be powered by the first cross-chain DEX aggregator, enabling users to discover many new assets and benefit from the best possible swap price across the Interchain.
- Service discovery: Today, there are so many chains and crypto projects launching that it’s impossible to keep track of everything, even for crypto diehards! Most people don’t know all the projects launching in the ecosystems they’ve already invested in, not to mention all the projects in other ecosystems! In short, there is a discoverability issue, and we want to help solve it. To that end, we will provide access to selected service opportunities across the chains we support, starting with airdrops and yield opportunities. Read more about these below.
Upcoming Features on Emeris
So what does this all mean? Along with various UX improvements and visual updates, the following major features will be progressively rolled out before public launch:
- Staking with auto-compounding of rewards: This exciting feature will come in two parts. First, we will add flows to stake assets on all supported chains, as well as metrics to keep track of staking balances. Then, a few months later, we will add the ability to auto-compound staking rewards on compatible chains, removing the need to manually claim and restake periodically in order to maximize rewards generation.
- Cross-chain DEX aggregation: Emeris’ swap widget will soon become much more powerful! In addition to the Gravity DEX protocol, access to other DEXs like Osmosis, Sifchain, Terraswap, and more, will be added. Emeris will figure out the best quote for any swap you’d like to make, and take care of the entire routing and swapping process for you. Ultimately, our goal is to provide the most advanced cross-chain aggregator in the market.
- Airdrops Tracker: Who doesn’t like airdrops? Airdrops are becoming more and more popular in the blockchain space as a way to bootstrap a community, especially when launching new chains. Yet, it’s still extremely hard to keep track of all the airdrops happening left and right, and to figure out whether you’re eligible. This problem is further compounded now that airdrops are happening across many different chains. This is why Emeris will soon release an Airdrop page, where airdrops on compatible chains will be listed in a comprehensive way. From there, you’ll be able to automatically check your eligibility to past and upcoming airdrops across many chains and, where possible, to claim airdrops directly from Emeris.
Emeris Browser Extension
In addition to the features described above, the public launch of Emeris will mark the official release of the Emeris browser extension, a key management solution that works seamlessly with the Emeris web dashboard. Why did we decide to build our own browser extension?
- Chain support: Most browser extensions out there today are built to support specific ecosystems (Ethereum, Cosmos, Solana, etc.). This creates complicated UX patterns when the web apps that use them want to give access to other ecosystems. Since the Emeris web app is built to be blockchain-agnostic, we quickly realized that having a chain-agnostic extension built from scratch would be necessary to maximize its usability.
- Experiment with different UX/UI patterns: By integrating third-party browser extensions, we depend on them to provide the UI and UX for wallet management and transaction signing. This limits us when it comes to providing a unified onboarding journey for new users as we have to align the UX of the app with the UX of the wallet (Emeris takes an asset-first approach, while Keplr takes a chain-first approach, for example). More generally, integrating with a third-party browser limits our ability to experiment with new features and UX patterns.
If you’re a Keplr user though, worry not! The Emeris web dashboard will keep supporting Keplr going forward, and will even add support for other browser extensions and mobile wallets.
Beyond Public Launch
While our main short-term goal is to provide tangible utility to early users of the Interchain, our longer-term objective is to broaden its user base as a whole. This means adding support for chains and wallets outside the Cosmos ecosystem, and also (and most importantly) carry on iterating on the platform to improve crypto’s main friction points, like onboarding, key management, and discoverability. We’ll be sharing more about these plans closer to the public launch so stay tuned and be sure to follow us on our socials for updates!
