Hello everyone! It is with great pleasure that I present you the ethspecs (beta), an interface based on the Ethereum blockchain , which was developed in order to simplify the use of ERC compliant wallets (e.g. Metamask), as well as to offer more functionality and indicators to the user. I have been developing this project for about 1 year and 2 months, at the snail's pace, but I hope you like it and it will be as useful for you as it is for me.
Note: you can find the portuguese version of this article here
ethspecs in a nutshell
Ethspecs condenses a range of different information into two distinct areas: the dashboard and the token area.
In the Dashboard, you can check the extract of all the resources (ethereum and tokens) associated with the address in question, as well as the summary of the last transactions of the account, a news feed and even the possibility of send ether to a certain account. Here you can also check the amount of tokens and ether received at that day.
In the Tokens section, a full list of all tokens associated with the account is available, so there is no need to add them to the app, as in Metamask and other similar wallets. In this listing, you can see the basic information of each token, ordering and filtering options for tokens by those with monetary value and some general portfolio indicators (eg token with the highest monetary value). If we click on a specific token, we can see detailed information about the token in detail, as well as the options to send the token and to see the same in etherscan.
Both in the dashboard and in the tokens section, there is an application's settings screen, which allows you to set some user preferences. In addition, an incoming transfer notification system is available in tokens and ether, which can be disabled or activated in the settings of the application.
Why ethspecs?
This project arose from the need to use Metamask in everyday life, however, we all know that Metamask is not the most intuitive portfolio to use, although it is the safest. It is a fact that this has improved substantially in the latest versions, but at the time (February 2018) the experience of use was insufficient. In addition, it did not provide the information or functionality it needed (having to add tokens manually in the plugin? Really?). In fact, what I was really looking for was an interface that would allow me to do the basic Metamask operations (send tokens and ethereum) and condense a lot of relevant information into one site. I've been looking for such a desktop interface for days, but I did not find any solution exactly as I wanted, so I decided to develop my own solution.
Keeping the information decentralized
This app was developed just as an interface to the Ethereum blockchain, and will never request any personal information of the user to their address (eg name, phone, email). The purpose here is to show information that is already available in a more intuitive and simple way, condensing the most important information in one place, almost as if it were the page of a newspaper.
In order to keep information as decentralized as possible, cookies are used to save user preferences in the browser, saving only simple information as the preferred fiat currency to display values (USD and EUR only, in a first stage), if the user wants to use notifications ("YES" or "NO"), etc. Even if you do not want to use cookies, you can disable cookies in settings. However, disabling cookies will remove the possibility of using certain features that need them.
Devices
Although this project was developed based on the use of a computer with Metamask, this interface also works in mobile, using other wallets, such as Status.io and TrustWallet. I confess that I was not planning in the first phase to support mobile, since the focus of the app was always in Metamask and that it does not exist in mobile, but nowadays it would be ridiculous not to support mobile devices.
For more app-related questions, you can check out the pages faq and about of ethspecs.
The present and the future
This is the first iteration of the beta version of ethspecs, and here the focus will be to test the basic features of the application, to check the stability of the application, usability, etc, since this is the first time this app is made available to the public. The idea is to iterate based on the feedback received, and I can not guarantee that, at this stage, the application does not have bugs. So I’ll appreciate any feedback!
I already have a series of ideas that I would like to implement in the future, such as checking multiple ethereum address resources in one place, adding more filters to the tokens and other components of the application, more types of notifications, more functionality in the tokens, more languages and fiat currencies, etc.
Thank you for reading so far
I hope you enjoyed it and try ethspecs !
I'm very curious to know what they think of the application, because I've been working on this project for more than a year in my spare time, and it's only now that I'm minimally comfortable in showing it to an audience. So say things!
If you have any questions or feedback, you already know what to do.
To access ethspecs, just click here.
If you want to know more about me and my work, you can do it here.
See you soon,
Shaden