The company needed to complete a complex migration on a tight deadline to avoid millions of dollars in post-contract fess and fines.
Decentralized Blockchain Exchange Development: User Experience and Interface
Industry: Financial
In the rapidly evolving world of decentralized finance, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have emerged as
pivotal components. While they inherently offer users more control and security, ensuring that their user
experience (UX) and interface design (UI) are up to par is essential. Remember, a DEX’s technical
soundness can be overshadowed by a confusing or challenging UX/UI.
Analysis & Goal Setting
Before starting the design process, we conducted thorough user interviews and gathered potential user feedback. We identified the following goals for the project:
- Intuitiveness: Because many users are unfamiliar with decentralized exchanges (DEXs), the platform should be easy to use and navigate.
- Transparency: The user interface (UI) should clearly show the decentralized nature of transactions and any associated fees.
- Responsiveness: Real-time updates on liquidity pools, swap rates, and transaction statuses are crucial.
- Interoperability: Advanced users expressed the need to integrate with multiple wallets and blockchain networks.
Design Process
- Wireframing & Prototyping: Initial designs were centered on core DEX functionalities such as swapping tokens, adding liquidity, and connecting wallets. Prototypes were developed iteratively, leveraging platforms like Sketch and InVision.
- Feedback Loop: Regular touchpoints with both crypto novices and experts ensured the platform catered to a broad audience. Crucial actions, like token swaps, underwent rigorous A/B testing to streamline user interactions.
- Modular Ul: Given the diverse nature of DEX activities – from staking to farming to swapping – a modular UI was adopted. This allowed users to customize their dashboard views based on their primary activities.
- Visual Feedback: Consistent user feedback was essential, especially for decentralized transactions, which might feel “invisible” without centralized confirmations. For example, when initiating a swap, users would see a real-time transaction confirmation tracker.
- Multi-theme Selection: To accommodate varied user preferences, multiple UI themes were incorporated, from classic light to cyberpunk neon.
- Guided Onboarding: A robust onboarding system was essential to demystify DEX operations. Users were introduced to concepts like liquidity pools, slippage, and gas fees through interactive guides.
Challenges & Solution Provided
C1: Gas Fee Estimations: Given the fluctuating nature of gas fees on networks like Ethereum, users found it hard to estimate transaction costs.
Solution: A real-time gas fee estimator was integrated, giving users a range of fee options from standard to fast. The system was taking feedback directly from the transaction pool of the blockchain and adjusting its estimations accordingly. Thus the percentage of delayed transactions given the users used the recommended fee amount was low.
C2: Wallet Integrations: Supporting a variety of crypto wallets without cluttering the UI was challenging.
Solution: A dynamic wallet connection system was designed, which auto-detected popular wallets and streamlined the connection process. This way we made sure most of the popular wallets will be working nicely with the system.
C3: Privacy Concerns: Users were apprehensive about on-chain data visibility.
Solution: We integrated optional privacy features, allowing users to shield transaction details when needed. This would remove any extra information about transactions that our servers kept or that were designed to reach the blockchain.
Given that DEXs operate on a decentralized model, they are prime targets for smart contract vulnerabilities and require rigorous audits and testing. Handling on-chain and off-chain data synchronization is another hurdle, ensuring that the DEX displays accurate and real-time information about orders, liquidity pools, and trades. This was mitigated mostly by having extensive coverage of the contracts used in the system and having them fully audited by three different entities in order to ensure clarity and efficiency and that they had no flaws that could be exploited in any way.
Optimizing gas fees is an ever-present challenge in networks like Ethereum, where transaction costs can escalate quickly. We have to design efficient smart contracts to reduce these fees and also provide users with strategies or alternatives like Layer 2 solutions or integrating other low-fee chains. Additionally, achieving interoperability between various blockchain networks can be complex but is essential to ensure a seamless experience for users wanting to transact between different chains.
Lastly, DEXs need to balance user-friendliness with the inherent complexity of decentralized systems. Too much complexity can deter the average user, but oversimplifying might not deliver the full potential and advantages of a decentralized platform. This was taken into account and the final decision was made to have 2 different UI interfaces, one simple that only provides the most crucial information to the users and one more detailed that adds all the extra bits of information that an experienced trader can use in order to perform better and have a better overview of the space.
Iterative Improvements
After analyzing post-launch data, we found that many users were hesitant to add liquidity, possibly because they were unfamiliar with the concept. To address this, we introduced an “Liquidity 101” interactive module to educate users about the benefits and mechanics of providing liquidity. Additionally, user feedback indicated a demand for cross-chain swaps. As a result, we updated the user interface to support multi-chain functionality, making it more flexible and accommodating for a variety of crypto assets. Furthermore, we enhanced the UI to provide more advanced users with access to additional information. This update aimed to eliminate the need for external tools and scripts that some traders used to extract information already available through the blockchain. By taking this step, we ensured that more users had access to valuable information that may have been difficult to obtain otherwise.
