Desktop Wallet 7.5 / 8.0 UI Update

[bigromanov]

Here is the list of proposed UI changed and improvements planned for the Desktop Wallet 7.5 / 8.0 releases. Depending on the progress with 8.0 Hard Fork, these changes could be released before the fork in the 7.5 version or with the 8.0 release.

1. Multi account / Multi network wallet

NEED / PROBLEM:
Current versions of Beam Wallet are built to work with a single network (Mainnet or Dappnet) and only allow for a single Account (identified by a specific seed phrase). This requires users who are working with several accounts or on different networks to install several binaries and manipulate several wallet folders which is not easy to do for most users.

PROPOSED SOLUITON:

• Build network / account selection into the login flow of the wallet.
• Ability to add new accounts should also be supported.
• Each Account will be accompanied by a label, to easily differentiate between accounts.
• Logout will return the user to the login screen where a different account and network can be selected

2. Move Swaps to the header buttons row (where Send and Receive are)

NEED/PROBLEM:
As Beam added more and more functionality the left menu bar has been expanded with all the new features added as additional buttons on the bar. It seems to be a good time now to reprioritize these functions.

Beam Desktop Wallet supports two types of swaps: Asset Swaps and Atomic Swaps. Asset Swaps is a built in marketplace for exchanging Confidential Assets on Beam chain, while Atomic Swaps allow for trustless decentralized swaps between Beam and BTC/LTC/ETH and several other coins and tokens.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

• Add Swap button to the right of Send and Receive buttons
• Swap will open Swaps screen with two tabls for Asset and Atomic swaps, respectively

3. Add dApp store to Main screen layout

NEED/PROBLEM:
Over time, decentralized confidential applications has become the central part of the Beam Desktop wallet functionality. Currently to access dApps, users need first to access the dApp Store screen from the left vertical menu.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

• Display dApps in the main screen of the wallet, under the Assets dashboard
• Move Transactions list to a separata sub tab on the main screen

4. Get rid of centralized dApp store catalogue

NEED/PROBLEM:
Currently Beam uses an outdated centralized dApp catalogue for the dApp store screen. H:owever, Beam already supports two better methods of distributing dApps - decentralized smart contract based store and .dapp local archives.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

• Remove centralized dApp store component
• Add essential dApp packages into the wallet installation (including BeamX DAO, Voting, DEX and possibly others)
• Show all Publishers in the d^2App store by default and allow to filter out, instead of current practice of explicitly adding Publishers by publisher id

5. Add Profile menu in the top right corner of the wallet

NEED/PROBLEM:
With the addition of multi account support (see point 1) it is necessary to logout to switch to a different account as well as work with account specific settings.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

• Add Profile menu (usually round button) in the top right corner of a wallet screen
• Move Edit account name, Settings and Logou menus to the Profile drop down menu
• Show Public Offline address, which is currently only seen in Settings
• Extra bonus: Use custom avatar as your account profile

6. Show SBBS and all other address components directly on the Receive screen

NEED/PROBLEM
Since most centrazlied exchanges still only accept pure SBBS addresses for Beam withdrawals
users are often confused on which address needs to be used between the standard Beam address that aupports both Online and Offline transactions and the legacy SBBS address

PROPOSED SOLUTION

• Show both addresses in the receive screen with added explanations on which address should be used in which scenario

[Galaxia]

It all sounds good except for number 3. This will over whelm newcomers and it will clutter the home screen. While now it still looks calm with the exception of it showing all features on the vertical menu on the left, showing all dapps on the home screen will give a chaotic feel. It sounds like it would be similar to how youtube feels without unhook installed, there is too much going on.
It should be simple and clear as opposed to chaotic and confusing.

If the mainstream public would get their hands on the beam wallet then the vast majority of people will use it as a normal wallet, the rest like atomic swaps, dapp store, voting etc is extra which would be used by the minority of people curious for more. So I’m against putting more than the bare minimum for wallet functionality on the front page.

[dbadol]

Thank you very much for sharing this list! It’s exciting to see that we will get a new version not only of the infrastructure stuff (hard fork 8.0) but also of the app that standard users handle every day.

My personal comments about the proposals are the following:

1. Multi account / Multi network wallet

This is excellent!

It’s also a good idea to use the word “Wallet” for the app, and “Account” for each account (as identified by a seed phrase). It’s easier to understand for new users: “The wallet holds your different accounts”…

Regarding the network, the default should be Mainnet without any further action or any doubt, so that we avoid any kind of error by new users. “Dappnet” is mysterious for most and should be hidden (it is an option for developers and advanced users, who can go into sub-sub-menus to select it).

This multi-account feature should be available for mobile also.

Question: Will each account use its own node? That would be a little overkill, isn’t it? Can we have one single integrated/mobile node running for all the accounts of a given wallet (for its accounts that do not explicitly asked to use a remote/random node). I don’t know if it applies, but I understand that a node can now handle multiple owner keys.

Recommendation: Even with this multiple account option, please keep the current possibility of running multiple instances of the wallet app on the same machine (each with its own appdata folder, and its own node). Keep also the “portability” of the desktop app (to allow using it from a USB stick, or on a non-install-allowed machine… at least for the power users that can configure it for that).

2. Move Swaps to the header buttons row (where Send and Receive are)

Ok with the idea of having a “Swap” button next to “Send” and “Receive”.

However, I think that what most users expect in a “Swap”, it’s the same experience as UniSwap or PancakeSwap: They expect an instant AMM swap-type between assets!

Thus, I think that the “Swap” button should present 3 options: first and foremost, the DEX, then the Asset Swap, then the Atomic Swap (i.e. going from the instant and simple one, to the longer and complex one).

3. Add dApp store to Main screen layout

As commented by Galaxia above, mixing the basic wallet functionalities (balances, send, receive, swap, latest transactions) with all and anything possible in Beam (i.e. all the DApps in the DApp Store) is going to be confusing and cluttered. Don’t do it!

I think the DApp Store should be kept apart, simply called through its sidebar icon. What can be done is add a favorite system to the store so that users can quickly reach their preferred DApps within it.

About listing all publishers by default: Isn’t it going to become cluttered with publishers? including copycats impersonating other important publishers and trying to push malicious DApps? A somehow similar situation to what we are seeing with Confidential Assets. I think that the users explicitly adding the desired Publisher Ids is a safer option. Or if we really want to give the full list, then don’t do it directly in the main window. Let it be in some sub-menu or sub-window.

4. Get rid of centralized dApp store catalogue

Yes for moving towards decentralization! Crypto news show that it’s important that smart contract GUIs cannot be censored!

One important option to add, though: Allow running the previous version of a DApp, if we don’t want to update it right away to its newest version (because source not verified yet, or because of a change made that is not desired, etc.). It will be the user’s responsibility that they are using an outdated version.

Also, it would be good if DApps could be launched in tabs, so that we can have multiple ones open at the same time.

5. Add Profile menu in the top right corner of the wallet

Ok. Should we use the word “Profile” or simply keep “Account” here too (same vocabulary as for the associated seed phrase account)?

Also, the public offline address there would be too prominent. That address has its very own specific use-case, which is not standard at all. Putting it too visible is going to confuse users even more than today (which is already a bit complicated with regular addresses vs SBBS/online addresses)…

6. Show SBBS and all other address components directly on the Receive screen

Yes to simplify and clarify the different options!

I think I would explain them as follows:

• Online address: Receiver must be online within 12 hours to complete the transaction. This is the address to use for withdrawals from most exchanges.
• Offline address: Receiver does not need to be online for the transaction to complete (similar behavior to most other cryptocurrencies).
• Regular address: It contains both online and offline addresses. The sender will chose which mode they want to use.

Note: I don’t know if “offline addresses” can actually be provided by themselves. If so, we could add them there. Because although it would add a third option, I believe it would actually clarify the whole thing.

[dbadol]

Some other items I noted to be discussed for next version of the wallet:

1. At first launch ask for the node to be used (with explanations). Default would be remote node, for quick and easy on-boarding. If a remote node is used, maybe a reminder can be put somewhere to advice switching to a integrated/mobile one.
2. We need to think about the Address Book too. It controls some specific options (like expiration) and it is useful for the Beam Messenger and to add automatic comments to the sent transactions.
3. Allow adding some favorite shortcuts or DApps in the sidebar?
4. Many people have asked for an option to view the account seed phrase (with the proper password protection, etc).
5. The Confidential Assets view option in the Settings/Utilities should probably be redesigned, considering the possibility of thousands of CAs to come (because of EVM compatibility)…
6. The faucet option can be removed from the Settings/Utilities (it is as easy to reach in the DApp Store than there).
7. We talked about it with Vladi in a TG channel, and I am still not sure how much it would be possible or not, but it would be logical to allow providing “transactions proofs” for our interactions with the smart contracts (i.e. when assets are sent to or received from them). Similar to the “Payment proofs” but to allow users to prove their wallet did one given interaction with a contract.

[dbadol]

One last thing: I take the opportunity of this discussion to remind that the new wallet will also come with many new languages, thanks to the work of community members who have translated them in multiple languages!

As of today we have the following ones. Volunteers are welcome on Telegram: Contact @BeamTranslations to help finish or add some more!

English: 100% (base language)
Chinese: 100%
French: 100%
Ukrainian: 100%
Japanese: 100%
Spanish: 100%
Portuguese Brazilian: 100%
Italian: 100%
German: 100%
Dutch: 100%
Russian: about 80%
Czech: about 75%
Swedish: about 70%
Belarusian: about 50%
Finnish: about 50%
Thai: about 50%
Korean: about 35%
Turkish: about 30%
Vietnamese: about 30%
Serbian (Cyrillic): 14% only
Indonesian: 5% only
Arabic: Website only
Hebrew: Website only

[exchange]

Can CHAT feature a LIVE HELP DESK - or at least offering to answer within one hour from a BANS Official Address such as Beam or support.beam (–I bought this BANS today and will forward any beam + questions to anyone doing support–)

[Vanilla-Ice-Beam]

Others here have made some good points. I don’t want to get into the details but here is my brief take on it.

I feel “official” beam wallets should, by default, be as newbie friendly as possible and concentrate on what I would say are the four pillars of money, “spend, save, earn, socialize”. Only the best of these functions should be on the front page. Yes, you are allowed to cherry pick and give favoritism because this is YOUR wallet development… someone else’s wallet can do as they please.

Beam’s weak point is, “how the hell do I obtain this?” and “why the hell should I bother?” This means, for now at least, your only real option is to concentrate on the socialize element. Imo, going forward, you should put out a very uncluttered interface and move all the nerdy stuff - DAO voting etc - to hidden / advanced features.

From here on, beam needs to do two things:

1. Stop working on the plumbing (new features) and concentrate on actually useful services.

• Group chat with audio-video calling
• twitter like services e.g. social tipping, nostr etc
• jobs market place
• online retail platform
• play to earn
• lottery or raffle services
• etc

2. Optimize speed / loading times because, right now, beam is much too slow. I don’t understand how the beam wallets / dapps are so slow to sync, but my guess is, there is one massive database. I’m sure this speed issue hurts adoption. You want to build something that people use EVERY DAY.

Of course, as nerds, we want to work on cryptocurrency things, but I want to tell you, you can do all these things but to pay the rent you need to first commercialize and incentivize, how else will people come?

I love the beam project and I’m not just waiting for payday to arrive, but in all honesty, I don’t open the wallets that often and we should be, all of us, finding real utility from it, a reason to use it Every Day.

[dbadol]

One more thing I just remembered:

• BANS names should be usable elsewhere (everywhere?) in the wallet. In the “Send” window, of course. But maybe also everywhere, including DApps.

I don’t know how possible this could be. And I understand it might need some deep changes under the hood, so it could be left for another version. But I just wanted to remind us here about this idea.

[dbadol]

I am thinking of another possible way to handle point 6 (display of SBBS address):

• We keep the layout of the Send window as it is, except that it’s now the SBBS address that is shown by default, with its QR code. The “details” popup shows all addresses, as it does today.
• An option in Settings (or in the “details” popup itself) allows configuring it to show the regular address by default instead.

This way, new users (who are likely coming from exchanges) will get the SBBS address right away. And more knowledgeable users, who better understand the differences, can ask to go back to the regular address display).

This is somehow the same approach as using a remote node by default: We facilitate as much as possible the on-boarding, and then help people move towards better practice.

Remark: Of course, all this will only be needed until the Exchanges update their system and start using the regular addresses, as thy should (which I suppose will only happen once Beam price and volume has significantly gone up).

[Galaxia]

Beamx needs more use cases. At the moment the possibilities with beam are infinite in a way. You can open a trove with it and borrow, add liquidity on Nephrite and get rewards in Beamx, or exchange it for anything else on many exchanges and with the advantages that come with that.

But Beamx its main draw is supposed to be governance, meaning when there are no proposals it has no use and thus often its main draw is that you can exchange it for beam on the DEX. Unless a proposal is coming or active you don’t want to hold Beamx because it will definitely decrease in price.

It would be great if we could make proposals in the BeamX DAO Voting Dapp. And instead of the beam team having to take action in finding and approving proposals the person creating the proposal would pay a fee in BeamX. This way BeamX is always relevant. I imagine the user simply clicking a link on the page of the DAO Voting DAPP that gives them the ability to propose something. In there it could even give guidelines as to what makes for a good proposal similar to the “create asset” page of the “Beam Asset Minter” page.

I made suggestion like this quite a long time ago in a space but it was probably forgotten. I don’t like saying this either but don’t forget to put dbadol’s proposal up for a vote in the wallet.

[dbadol]

Right. Votes are important to give more value to BeamX (and also to help move more practically towards a DAO governance). We are getting away of the subject of this thread (which is the Wallet update) but I do have a proposal pending indeed. I will prepare the actual text of it (so that they can simply copy-paste it) and ask for it to go to vote.

[Vanilla-Ice-Beam]

I agree about more use cases for BANS but I just went to say, I’ve never used BANS because it needs renewals. I am far more interested in seeing an immutable username attached to an NFT.

[NoobieWanKenoobie]

Can we have XMR on Beam Atomic Swap in the new release?

[dbadol]

That would be cool… But it’s not a simple wallet issue. The Atomic Swap process is a complex one, that needs to be worked on on both sides. I don’t know if someone has already looked into it for Monero/Beam (it’s a hard project by itself). Anyway, for sure it’s not something for this hard fork 8.0 or this updated wallet…

[Adminymous]

I have a feature request. As of now, I can say with confidence that Beam is literally the most private coin I have seen. It has a wide range of use cases. All of everything it has to offer is surrounded in privacy! The only chief complaint I have is emission isn’t private. Originally, in the original design, it was private. We used our miner key and generated SBBS address, and all on the main website, if I’m not mistaken. Eventually, some pools started just taking the SBBS address and the pooled rewards to distribute them. In this way, it was not really an issue for privacy and made the pools easier to set up. You would just need port IP and SBBS address. With that being said, the ease of the wallet in its original design was amazing. It contained a CPU miner built-in. As the network grew, that part of the wallet was removed. This made sense and was not a bad choice.

However, there was never a replacement for anonymous emission. THIS FORCED everyone to use a pool or they could set up their own solo pool, but again, this was using the CLI wallet. One thing Beam lacks is marketing. This is self-admitted and as such, I believe the devs and team are so technical they can’t get on a layman’s level. We want ease of use. The original wallet was designed with this, and that was outstanding in design. As things were added, it became more and more useful. Things were definitely added in that are great. The DApps, the NFT, the DEX, atomic swaps bridges, just to name a few. However, as such, the wallet became slightly bulky and had to be redesigned. It is now good, but there is one thing the team is still lacking. The ability to recognize when something is easy to use by a layman. It seems simple to the devs and the team. However, the CLI wallet is only used by those that want maximum privacy. The GUI, although private, still relies on more code and as such, just by nature of design, the more code the more potential for exploits. However, running a CLI wallet on a mobile is not an option that would be used by a layman. It simply is impractical. This is how most laymans view setting up a mining pool. The same concept as running a CLI on a phone. It just doesn’t make sense. Beam has stood out as being the most private coin, yet emission is now almost centralized. P2Pool was discussed, and I have no doubt that they might go that way eventually. However, at the end of the day, the only way to get emission is to sacrifice privacy, either by going to a pool or going to an exchange to buy. Don’t we want emission to be spread across the user base? Imagine if there were 250,000 people and each one had 10 coins they mined over a few months from within the GUI wallet. Everyone could turn electricity into coins, with the costs of the electrical backing those coins.

Download Beam GUI:

Users should be able to download the Beam GUI for their wallet.

Generate Seed:
The wallet should provide a feature to generate a seed for the user.

Synchronize:
Synchronize their wallet to ensure accurate and up-to-date information.

Upon clicking “Start Mining” in the wallet:

The wallet should auto-generate a miner key and necessary configurations in the config file I am unsure if one exits in the gui the same way as the cli however, due to the fact the orignal wallet could mine with a cpu. I belive that all of the core code is still there and just needs to be modified.

Check if loliminer.exe is present; if not, provide options to fetch it automatically via curl/git or allow manual download and placement in a directory.

https://github.com/Lolliedieb/lolMiner-releases/releases/download/1.77b/lolMiner_v1.77b_Win64.zip

Dynamic SBBS Address and Loliminer Relaunch:

Loliminer should be launched in the background the moment you click “START MINING”

Or have the option to generate just strtum and port if someone has thier own miner they want to use.

lolMiner --coin BEAM --pool 127.0.0.1:3333 --user yourwalletaddress

Every 59 days, the wallet should automatically close and relaunch loliminer with a new SBBS address, regardless of block success to make sure the sbbs is still valid.

As of now the only solomining guide is for linux…and whyis a solomining video that is 4 years old to set it up on windows. I have yet to get it to function correclty on modern wallets in windows.
Its possible its just me. However this needs to be looked at if and when the team gets time.

Solo Mining Beam

Remains to be perfect for solomining in the cli only. There needs to be a way to solomine from the GUI.

[NoobieWanKenoobie]

ok, I get it. thanks anyway.

[NoobieWanKenoobie]

I loved this idea. Hopefully, the dev team would work on it someday.

[NoobieWanKenoobie]

can we fix this? not a big thing, just a small typo I noticed when syncing my wallet. thanks!

[maxnflaxl]

I’m on it

edit: done, will be fixed in the next release

[tangent]

Hello, Couple of suggestions (don’t think I saw them above).

Problem: Difficult to remember what the all leftmost icons are for.
Possible Soln: Tooltips… or at least an option for tooltips if that’s considered ugly.

Problem: DEX liquidity filtering makes it difficult to choose the correct pool.
Possible Soln:
i) By default sort by liquidity (move ‘liquid’ to far left), and perhaps move ‘All’ one slot (or even farther) to the right.
ii) Sort the liquid pools by liquidity (personally prefer in USD, but Beam would work too). Would need to find the ‘path’ from the liquidity pool CA-pairs back to Beam in some fashion (if one exists) – using the current DEX exchange rate as you go.
iii) Have some threshold to exclude very small liquidity amounts once displayed in Beam/USD (5e-8 is not helpful… it’s zero). This exclusion would be for the ‘liquid’ filter only (not All)