In-line with Gavin’s vision for Polkadot, at Talisman (Talisman is a browser based Polkadot crypto wallet, designed specifically for the Polkadot web3 ecosystem http://talisman.xyz) we believe the future will be multi-chain and with that vision in mind, we need to consider to how we approach technical and design problems, to ensure we’re building the right long term solution that scales successfully as we approach 200+ Parachains and unlimited solochains.
This article is going to cover some of the key UX problems in the Polkadot ecosystem that Talisman is solving and why Talisman is the best placed wallet to handle your Polkadot AND Ethereum assets.
Thinking about this vision of pure multi-chain where users can transfer and interact with assets across 200+ blockchains, I believe it will grow less and less likely that the user will know what chain they are interacting with, but focus more on their current use-case and the action they are trying to achieve.
Over the last 6 months, the community focus has been on parachains as they have been stood up. However we are quickly seeing with Astar, Moonbeam & Moonriver, the actual chain is fading to the background and the dapps or applications that a user can perform are coming to the foreground.
This will be more prevalent as dapps start to compose their products, using multiple features from multiple parachains, harnessing the power of XCM as predicted by Hoon Kim (CTO Astar).
The user won’t care about the technology under the hood, just the task they are trying to perform.
With the above in mind, I want to go through several examples of how Talisman is solving some of the UX issues in the Polkadot ecosystem and empowering new users to onboard to crypto, as well as helping experienced users to switch from other wallets to the most user friendly Polkadot wallet, Talisman.
- Asset management and account structuring
With Ethereum, when you use an account across mainnet and L2 networks, your wallet address remains the same. This makes it easy to visually recognise and share your address with others.
One of the interesting design decisions with Polkadot is that, every parachain will have their own address format for the same account. When we hit 200+ parachains, this means one account in your wallet, will have 200 different addresses that can be sorted and copied, depending on the application. 😓
At Talisman, we have structured the wallet differently than most, deciding to order assets based on account first, rather than by parachain. This will make it infinitely easier for the user to understand their portfolio, especially as XCM develops. In the future it’ll be possible to have one asset (e.g. DOT) across these 200 chains. So rather than showing 200 instances of DOT across the wallet, Talisman will only show DOT once, with the ability to click into the asset to explore where and how much of it resides in what chain.
This also means that when the user goes to copy their address, they only need to click copy on the specific account they are using to send or receive funds from, and then search for the parachain that they are interested in to copy their address.
2. Connecting to dapps
With other Polkadot wallets, once you’ve connected to a dapp, you need to then program the wallet to select the parachain that you’re wanting to leverage. When I onboarded into the Polkadot ecosystem with Polkadot.js, this was one of the most confusing aspects, and it really made Polkadot feel overly technical and not user-friendly.
With Talisman, the wallet does all the work to determine which chain is correct and automatically set it for you. Nothing is presented to the user, they NEVER need to switch networks it just works.
With other wallets, the user also needs to allow every one of their accounts to be authenticated with the dapp at once. This isn’t great for privacy, as the user may have accounts that they don’t want the dapp to know about or have access to.
With Talisman, the user also has the fine grain control to individually select the wallets at the time they authenticate, to preserve their privacy. Again a first in the Polkadot wallet space.
3. Signing transactions
Arguably, after securely storing your funds, two of the main things a wallet should be good at doing is connecting to dapps and signing transactions. Hey if it can also show your multi-chain assets nicely, that’s a pretty big bonus too 😉
Talisman have built a really easy to understand transaction experience that caters for the everyday user, and the developer level by providing a summary and the full transaction data.
Talisman is formatting the transaction data to ensure it’s easy for the user to read and for the user to understand the action they are taking. We’re excited to share in the future the advancements we’re making in this space.
4. Ethereum support
Until Talisman released Ethereum support, to leverage all of the Polkadot parachains and dapps, a user would have to navigate two wallets, generally Talisman and Metamask. However our Ethereum support runs much deeper than just slapping an EVM signer into the wallet and touting Ethereum compatibility.
So how did Talisman one up Metamask and build a better wallet for the EVM Parachains? Firstly we looked at all the UX problems in the ecosystem and made sure we didn’t deliver until these were solved.
Firstly it was important to consider the UI/UX of the wallet when using Ethereum vs Substrate for all facets, including viewing assets, connecting to dapps and signing transactions. The Talisman experience for using Ethereum is almost the same as Polkadot and the non EVM parachains. This was not only a complex UX challenge, but also difficult from a technology aspect too! Regardless of the blockchain and transaction, using the wallet feels consistent and smooth.
Secondly another main issue users told us that frustrated them when using Metamask was only being able to connect to one network on one dapp at a time. With Talisman you can connect to any number of dapps, on any network, all at the same time. This has been a revelation for our users — it feels like true multi-chain is getting closer.
Thirdly users told us that the transaction experience, particularly regarding paying fees (gas) was frustrating. How many times have you used Metamask or other wallets on L2s where the wrong gas, gas price or even basics about the transaction are displayed incorrectly?
Talisman always calculates the correct gas amount and selects the lowest gas based on the network traffic. We’ve paid special attention to ensure this works correctly, every time.
In conclusion, as you can see from the above, Talisman is not only providing the best Polkadot wallet but we are also thinking deeply around user problems in the ecosystem and building a product that WE also want to use.
If the future is Multi-chain and the user shouldn’t need to know which chain they are on, everything should “just work”.
Talisman the ONLY wallet where you can see every asset, on every parachain, on every account, all at the same time. Others claim to be multi-chain, but really they are just many-chain. Change your life, download Talisman: https://talisman.xyz/download
