The BitShares Blockchain: UI Release 20190618
The BitShares Blockchain is an industrial-grade and fully decentralized platform that is open source and maintained by its community. The BitShares UI serves as secure wallet for the private keys of your BitShares account and a point of entry to interact with the BitShares blockchain. Among many other features lies the natively built-in decentralized exchange (DEX). Have a look here and there for more information, there is also the whitepaper.
Today the BitShares UI Team is pleased to bring you the most recent iteration of the user interface which includes several exciting new features. These items are the result of the team’s pursuit of it its mission to expand the utility of BitShares for advanced users as well as simply and improve the experience for all skill and interest levels.
The new release of the BitShares UI has been published (Version 2.0.190618) and is available at
Spotlight Features
Exciting and upcoming features are highlighted in the spotlight section. Please have a look, and have fun!
Hash Time-Locked Contracts
Atomic Cross Chain Swaps (ACCS) or simply “Atomic Swaps” require the receiver to acknowledge a transaction prior to a deadline by generating cryptographic proof of payment. This is accomplished through the use of a hash and preimage via Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLC). Should the recipient fail to supply the proof, they will forfeit the ability to claim the payment and it will return to the payer. This functionality allows for completely trustless wallet-to-wallet trading between assets and enables a significant reduction in counterparty risk.
The implementation of HTLC significantly widens the permeability of the BitShares ecosystem as it allows transfers between BTS and other HTLC-enabled blockchains directly and in a completely decentralized fashion. Trading with assets outside the BitShares ecosystem is now possible and eliminates the necessity of using a gateway. For a detailed explanation, consult the user guide here. Try it out here.
Awareness Alerts
Following attempts to compromise the accounts of more novice users via misleading proposals (first detailed in this post from February, 2019), highly visible information and warnings about these will appear in the dashboard section if an account becomes targeted.
A news and alert banner in the top section of the wallet will also direct all users to emerging threats which exist in a timely fashion, or simply distribute news in a rapid and effective manner (see example below).
Direct Debit Authorization
Recurring payment authorizations (a basic but significant business use) are now possible to arrange for secure disbursement of funds. Users may give access to payments for specified accounts and may control parameters over the assets, sums and intervals they desire with ease and flexibility. Try it out here.
Market Fee Sharing
Asset owners such as Gateway operators can now define that a percent of all market fees for a given asset are funneled through the referral rewards program. The flexibility of this new feature creates enormous incentive for web admins to onboard new users into BitShares.
Given that the bitUSD and bitCNY stablecoins support asset fee sharing, it is possible to provide reliable incentive for referring entities to bring new users to the ecosystem. Each time a referral is completed, any given percentage (defined by asset owner) of the market fee is set aside and funneled into the already existing referral rewards program. When combined with new features such as the direct debit authorization, these funds are able to be distributed in a straightforward and “hands off” fashion leaving those involved to more important tasks.
At the time of writing, market fee sharing is enabled for bitUSD, bitCNY and bitEUR (a staggering 80%). The possibilities are vast and can already be seen on the existing onboarding ways for the BitShares Blockchain. The biggest effect can currently be seen on the registrar of MagicWallet, which could accumulate 70,700 bitCNY since the beginning of July through market fee sharing. This is certainly due to the heavy use of bitCNY and the direct on- and offramping possibilities in their mobile app. The registrar of the reference wallet has accumulate 4000 bitCNY in the same period.
Interface Optimization
Open orders may now be grouped by asset and selectively cancelled in one operation if desired. A full CSV history can also be exported in both CoinTracking and personally refined formats. If you have any formats or other statistics services that require a specific format, please feel free to tell the BitShares UI team and it might just get supported!
Default templates have been expanded and users may choose from light, night and midnight layouts
Light
Dark
Midnight
Get Involved
Do you like what you see here, and want to help guide the direction of the team? The full history and discussion of this and past release candidates are posted in the forum, so any and all comments, suggestions and bug reports are highly appreciated!
Best regards,
The BitShares UI team
Release notes and binaries for a local install can be found here https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-ui/releases/tag/3.1.190618.1