The Zippie Alpha 6 release is out!
It’s been a while since the last release but the greatest and the latest Zippie version is now out. So, without further ado, here’s the list of new features:
- Completely rewritten UI from scratch using React
- Zippie Secretary Android application for Zippie card recovery
- Revoking (recovery) devices and Zippie card
- Main wallet
- Generic ERC20 support
- Huge amount other improvements
Our Zippie R&D team has worked long and hard to deliver this version. So, big thanks to everyone in the team who helped make it happen! Now, let’s see in more detail what all these changes mean in practice.
A completely revamped UI
Alpha 6 is the first release which has a completely revamped new user interface. Instead of just creating new assets to the old UI, we went one step further and rewrote the entire UI from scratch using React. The reason behind this rewrite was to improve responsiveness and build the UI in a more structured way. In the future, this should help make it easier to customize Zippie.
In the Alpha 6 release, we focused to get functionality in place. In the coming versions, we will improve the user interface even further, for example by improving transitions when moving between views. Even though there is still work left, you can already see and feel that the UI is more reactive compared to the old Vue based version.
Zippie Card
As you probably remember, we added support for the Zippie card in the previous version. Alpha 6 will add more features such as card recovery and the ability to revoke and remove registered devices.
To recover your Zippie ID using the card, you need to download a helper application called Zippie Secretary. The Secretary application will eventually be available in the Google Play store. In the meantime, it’s only available for our alpha testers.
Recovery with the card requires just a few steps:
- Download and install the app (Zippie onboarding will have a link to the app later)
- Enter your recovery PIN code
- Read the card via NFC
- Wait for recovery to finish
In the previous version, we introduced payment confirmation using the card. However, we decided to disable this feature for now because the UX wasn’t good enough. Unfortunately, users who registered the card are forced to create a new Zippie ID to get rid of the card confirmation. We decided to focus on new features instead of implementation migration for card removal to push this release out.
This is one reason why we want to run our software in the testnet and make sure everything works. Happily, you don’t lose any tokens because of this change.
New wallet and generic ERC20 support
Alpha 6 release is a big release for the wallet too. There’s a new main wallet, which lists all sub-wallets for the assets in the wallet. In previous versions, we supported ZIPT and WETH only but Alpha 6 introduces generic ERC20 support. It means that Zippie wallet can receive any ERC20 token and it will create a new sub-wallet dynamically when a new token type is received. Similarly, users can send any ERC20 token via Zippie’s payment link to any user — even to users who don’t have an existing crypto wallet.
Known issues
As always, there are still many things to improve. Here’s a short list of most visible issues or missing features:
- Onboarding doesn’t have a language option
- UI transitions need to be improved
- Refresh issues — revoking a device and getting test tokens may require extra refresh
- Sending tokens to Ethereum address is not possible
- Dapps tab is disabled
- Not possible to set ID photo
- Recovery with another device — verify button doesn’t do anything on desktop Chrome
- It’s possible to create multiple payment links exceeding the total balance
- Exceeding current balance when creating a payment link shows the wrong message
- Refreshing to the latest Zippie version using Chrome may fail. Try to refresh a few times and close the tab and you should see the latest version.
- Other recovery methods? We are working on a link and passphrase recovery and also recovery buddy feature. These methods will work on all platforms and don’t need NFC.
I really hope you like our Alpha 6 release. If you’re new to Zippie, go ahead and point your browser to https://my.zippie.org to check it out. Zippie still runs in testnet so there’s no risk of losing any tokens. We’re confident that Zippie’s the fastest way to enter the blockchain world. To see what the future will look like, go and give it a try.
Btw, we are heading to Slush, Europe’s leading startup event in Helsinki next week so stay tuned for updates. If you’re there, why not come and have a chat.
That’s all for now. But remember, if you’ve got any questions, be sure to get in touch via our Telegram channel. You can also follow our progress and join our community on Twitter, Reddit and YouTube.
