Talisman Proposal: Portal Web Application supporting Nomination Pools and more - Milestone 1
Talisman (talisman.xyz) is a community-owned wallet and web application that enables users to “traverse the Paraverse” with ease. We believe in a future where everyone has freedom via true agency over their intentions and finances, and we believe that DotSama will bring this to fruition.
For more on Talisman’s mission and approach, please see Agyle’s talk at Polkadot Decoded: Polkadot Decoded 2022: Traverse the Paraverse: How Talisman is bringing multi-chain to the masses
And Jonathan’s talk about wallet UX at the Sub0 developer conference:
Talisman: The UX Chronicles: How To Deliver A Substrate Experience To The Masses
Today, because of its early stage of development and complex multi-chain architecture, both Polkadot and Kusama are changing rapidly and the user experience (UX) can be confusing for end users. It’s our goal to solve that using design, storytelling, and engineering. We abstract away the complexity of underlying implementation and provide a friendly user experience when using DotSama and a way to discover new applications and services available to end users, while keeping them safe and educated about the actions they are taking.
In this proposal, we are seeking to fund improvements to Talisman Portal, Talisman’s “one stop shop” web application that enables users to discover and access Polkadot ecosystem activities with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. This is an open source dapp that supports multiple Polkadot Ecosystem wallets, including: Polkadot.js (500,000+ users), Talisman (20,000+ users), SubWallet (20,000+ users), and Enkrypt (20,000+ users).
The Talisman Portal is an open source dapp hosted at https://app.talisman.xyz. It targets the Polkadot Adventurer, a crypto user who believes in the Polkadot vision and spends a large chunk of time exploring and participating in ecosystem activities, including:
- Viewing, managing and organizing multi-chain assets (tokens, NFTs) and accounts
- Generating a return on investment for their portfolio (we do not provide financial advice, but rather allow users to better understand their positions and opportunities)
- Discovering and participating new dapps and services available in the ecosystem, such as crowdloans (live) and governance (targeted for later in 2023)
- Education and learning about Polkadot, the ecosystem and dapps and services that are available
Directly enabled by the work in this proposal, includes the UX work around Talisman’s nomination pools, which has led to Talisman's nomination pool garnering the largest amount of DOT since launch (>1 million DOT). This is a testament to the simplicity of the staking experience provided by Portal, combined with our trusted brand for new and experienced users. We hope to continue to enable users to stake easily no matter how much or little DOT they have in their accounts.
More than just providing a feature set, Portal is designed with the user first, because UX and design are incredibly hard problems in a multi-chain and quickly-evolving environment. Polkadot Adventurers are committed to being in Polkadot, but they need trusted tools that simplify the experience and enable them to become evangelists that ultimately bring new users into the ecosystem.
The following feedback is from a recent user survey in Feb 2023 about Talisman Portal:
- “Being easy to use is why I recommend it to my normie frens”
- “I consider the strength to be viewing cross-chain assets all in one place”
- “Definitely better UI/UX and easier to use than Polkadot.js”
- “Awesome design and an essential tool for day to day use of Polkadot”
- “The super simple interface gives me peace of mind when dealing with my money”
- 90% consider staking easier to use than Polkadot.js or the most convenient way to stake DOT
We would love to get your feedback on the proposal. Please see the full proposal here.
Comments (9)
It seems the proposal has no access. Also, the team at Parity has built a wonderful and great UI staking dashboard: https://staking.polkadot.network/#/overview, and has integrated all wallets. So my question is: Why should the treasury fund another staking dashboard?
The link has been updated, thanks for letting us know! You’re right, there is a well functioning staking dashboard made by Parity, and there would have to be a very strong reason for someone else to make the same thing (same functionality and same target user). I would ask you to consider two factors: 1) there is a reason to have more than one user access point in a network that prioritizes decentralization, and 2) Portal is not just a staking dashboard and actually has a different user focus both in the way that it bundles functionality and targets a certain user/use case. For the first point, something familiar to all of us is the argument that a diversity of access points to a network increases its censorship resistance. Up to a point, of course. But this illustrates a philosophical reason why the Polkadot benefits from multiple avenues to perform core functionality, and why the treasury might fund an additional way to stake DOT. For the second point, the Polkadot staking dashboard and Portal are very different products from a user point of view. Portal is not only about staking, but the staking-related functionality is designed to be a simple yet trusted way for a user to stake DOT. It purposely excludes much of the functionality that one can do with pools (manage nomination pools for example, view nominations for each pool), and excludes the all of the detail that the Polkadot staking dashboard has. There is a hypothesis behind the design choices that a simple trusted experience actually opens up staking to a much wider audience compared to a product that has all the bells, whistles and details. The Parity staking dashboard is a product for prosumer-type Polkadot users who are already knowledgeable about the network, and while that has a very important place in the ecosystem, it can be daunting for many users who may not spend a lot of time studying Polkadot. Of course you can stake with no issue, but It also allows you to view network stats (containing a lot of Polkadot jargon), manage nomination pools, as well as study which validators each nomination pool uses. But this is kind of functionality can make things confusing for someone who just wants to stake. Many people could use both (as I do) depending on the job to be done. I would suggest that the bigger picture we are probably aligned on is that there is an uphill battle to make Polkadot successful, and the treasury is there to fund initiatives that can help. For us, that means how can we make Polkadot friendly and easy to use, and reduce the cognitive load on the user by focusing on their user experience. This is good for both new users and experienced users. We think coming at problems from this angle is very important for the future of the ecosystem. I hope that you could consider that is what we strive to bring to the table for our shared future benefit. Beyond that, don’t forget Portal goes beyond just staking - it integrates portfolio management, crowdloans, dapp discovery, etc, in a way that is packaged together to make things simpler for the end user.
Considering the amount of immense work that the Talisman team puts into the ease of use and onboarding users to the Polkadot (i'd dare to say much more than any other team/product in the ecosystem), at this point it is pretty much strange that they are not directly backed by Parity! Do not get hung up on the "pools support", people, there's so much more here to offer to users. The vision of this team, and teams alike, is exactly what Polkadot needs to rise up and take the throne that it deserves!