The IOTA Wallet — time for a refresh?
Editor: The core focus of IOTA has been to enable seamless and secure machine-to-machine interaction. The IOTA Foundation has provided a basic GUI interface for interacting with, and transacting on the network. However, some users (particularly those new to the technology) have asked for a redesign of the wallet, to tackle some of the issues they face. Charlie from the IOTA@UCL team has decided to take on this challenge.
We are in the process of redeveloping the IOTA GUI wallet. Writing the codebase in React.js allows for simple cross-platform deployment, and so the new wallet will be available for both desktop and mobile. Our aim is to make the wallet more attractive, feature-laden and easy to use.
Over the last couple of weeks, Navin and I (Charlie) have made significant changes to the design. The existing desktop wallet is comprised of one main page with conventional ‘burger’ navigation. This will be replaced by a more dynamic tab navigation system, with more space for both new and existing features.
The simplicity of the design allows significant room for additional features to be added over the coming months. We intend the wallet to be fully customisable, allowing the user to select which particular features they wish to use in-app.
Here are some of the main features we are looking to add:
- First-time user guide and information. There is a slight learning curve with IOTA token storage. More explicit information and warnings will alleviate the problems faced by new users.
- Automatic conversion to fiat (initially USD). To inform the user of the value of the transfer / balance.
- Default viewing of transactions as bundles, rather than changes to individual addresses. This has caused some confusion to novice users.
- Transaction queues. This feature will prevent 2 transfers from being intitiated at the same time, and instead queue up the subsequent transactions, to prevent invalid transactions.
- Minimal, Standard and Expert modes. With varying technical abilities, users require different levels of complexity from their wallet. Three different modes will allow for variation in the visibility of technical information.
- Auto-reattaching of transactions as default. The wallet will reattach a transaction if it is not confirmed after a certain period of time. The period and number of reattaches are to be decided.
You may also manually re-attach and re-broadcast intuitively in Expert Mode.
Newer strategies for promoting transactions will also be tested. - Two factor authentication and transaction pin code. And perhaps a wallet password with storage of an encrypted seed, to be decrypted at the point of use.
Wallet security is the priority, and this is a sensitive topic with many opposing views, so we are looking to explore every option to ensure the safety of your funds. - A modular design with scope for new plugin development.
The first of these plugins is for market charts and data, allowing easy viewing of important market information, and a variety of currency/timeframe chart combinations.
Other ideas in consideration:
1. Seed-to-mnemonic phrase generation
2. Wallet data file export for physical storage
3. Theme (font and colour) customization
4. Desktop and mobile-specific UI
5. Hardware support
If you would like to contribute your views and ideas on the wallet’s redevelopment, any suggestions would be most welcome.
We would greatly appreciate it if you could complete this 2 minute survey, giving feedback on the proposed design and features, as well as any additional suggestions for what you would like to see:
After initial internal development for the UCL summer project, we hope to open this up to the community for collaborative development.
Many thanks,
Charlie Varley and Navin Ramachandran
