SAFE Network Dev Update - November 21, 2019

[Sascha]

Thanks again, everyone, and especially @danda.

[JimCollinson]

@mav

Is this safecoin symbol a unicode character? Don’t recall having seen this before. Pretty neat.

This is just mocked up at the moment, but that’s the idea, we’ll need it.

It’s actually a figure based on an idea by @nowfeelsafer, rather than the typical Safecoin logo, which really doesn’t work well as a glyph like this.

Subject to the Safecoin trademark things shaking out, and a thumbs up from @nowfeelsafer, I think this would be worth taking forward.

[JimCollinson]

@danda

As such, when i read this statement in the update, it immediately caught my eye as something to be wary of:

If, for example, there are per-App and Global spending limits, giving a soft, self dismissing alert to the user when a new App begins incurring cost keep the user informed and able to make a direct intervention, without the need to interrupt their flow.

big/small are relative terms and mean very different things to different people or even the same person at different times. So i think it needs to be introduced clearly and gently. That could mean that the first time an expense comes up (of any size), the user needs to be notified with a modal popop and explicitly authorize the expense and be prompted to set (or review) spending thresholds that fit their particular circumstances.

All the controls will be available for you to do that kind of thing if you wish. However, I think it’s wrong to assume this would make users Safecoin more secure if this was the default.

The idea of notifications, and combinations of controls such as these, is to enable users to spot and act on anomalies. Putting these kinds of direct explicit consent checks in front of every new expense, increases the noise, and increases the chance that a user will get into the habit of just tapping through—often blindly—to get rid of the interruption to the task at hand. You see this kind of behaviour all the time with things like the totally over-egged cookie consent banners etc.

You could see it akin to data expenses on a pay-as-you go mobile phone. It’d be pretty damn annoying to be take out of my flow to confirm the data spend on a messaging app that I’ve just installed, and already given implied consent through pressing the send button after composing a message. A passive notification that I could just swipe away in this circumstance is probably more than adequate and tolerable.

However, if i’m in the course of other tasks on a completely different app, and one of these notifications appears, then I can quickly intervene, and I can also be safe in the knowledge that a malicious app can only do as much damage as I’ve deemed tolerable through a pre-defined spending limit.

But anyway… suffice to say you’ll have the controls you need to keep things buttoned down if you want, and we can wrap these things in handy presets too.

[JimCollinson]

@danda

Then there will (not for the initial MVP, but it’s roadmapped) a set of spending thresholds, on a per app basis, and on a global Account level.

I’m glad spending thresholds are in the roadmap. I would urge you to consider including it in MVP though, at least at the global account level, so that people can have a sense they are in ultimate control of their funds.

It’s always tempting to keep on piling on things to an MVP, but we do have to be a bit ruthless, and the iterate from there.

Spending controls are necessary and important, but there are also a significant amount of work, involving not only frontend work, but network and SCL work too.

The priority is getting a functional network up, so that we can all spend Safecoins in the first place, and move on quickly from there. (The way the roadmap works with overlapping streams of work we may even be able to have all these things for beta anyway).

But in the mean time, we still are considering how it all fits together, and what the requirements are. So rest assured it’s in hand!

@drehb

If this feature isn’t included, a simple work around would be keeping limited funds in the account you use daily, and segregating your other coins into an account reserved for storing coins only.

@neo

No need for separate accounts as we will be able to have multiple coinBalanes in the one account and just keep limited funds in the default coinBalance

Yeah, these are good points guys. A nice workaround that also demonstrates what we can/should be considering MVP.

[Harvindar]

The crowd is going crazy…FLEMING! FLEMING! FLEMING! FLEMING!

[betterthantrav]

It doesn’t have to be the default, but I would want the option to approve all spending before Safecoin is deducted from my account.

By the time I get there alert that my Safecoin was spent, it is to late and I will never get that Safecoin back.

[bridge]

Thanks for sharing.

[19eddyjohn75]

Thnx for the update Maidsafe devs,

My last on vacation.

Wow just wow the UX, this makes everything so shiny.

I’m really look forward to an non command line interaction with the SAFE Network. but I’m willing to give it a try if a step-by-step howto showed up.

@danda

[nowfeelsafer]

Glad you like it (and found it, it’s was 4 years ago)
The font is “Agency FB” and then some basic image editing to insert the = sign,

[steve_smith]

What do community think? How soon we can see launch?

[Nigel]

Hey @JimCollinson @ravinderjangra I’ve noticed you are also designing in a material design style and was wondering how you plan on going about that on mobile since you are using Xamarin?

I was hoping this would be helpful NuGet Gallery | Xamarin.Forms.Visual.Material 4.3.0.991211 for your mobile endeavors. It’s something Nick and I are looking at so we can get into mobile development sooner rather than having to bridge safe_app and Dart.

Let me know if this comes in handy at all or what approach you are already considering for something like the mobile SAFEnetwork APP.

On the other hand if Dart is something the team plans on pursuing then that’s something we could contribute to it’s just not something that is cost and time effective for us to tackle on our own and then solely maintain.

Edit: just found this tool for porting in all material icons in googles library. Should be handy since visual material doesn’t have everything besides basics and presets AFAIK. Material icons generator - Visual Studio Marketplace

[Cryptoskeptic]

By this time next year it will be very exciting

[jeremyjpj0916]

I feel like we say that every year but I certainly hope you are right. The company is at least now organized as a lean delivery machine with no office and minimal focus outside of engineering for the time being. How they probably should have ran since 2016 until MVP but better late than never.

[Cryptoskeptic]

I bought in 2017. It took me a while to understand the scale and complexity of the venture. After I did, I thought launch would be in 2022 so anything earlier will be a bonus, for me anyway.
The Fleming milestone will give us the basic network anyway. Maxwell appears to shore it up. The UX work is simplifying things for users. Something crucial for non techos like me

[JohnM]

I had exactly the same thoughts. I started buying-in in 2017 and felt it was about a 5 year project to get to launch given the massive scale of the endeavor. Since then there has been consistent, well-documented progress. It seems like a launch in 2021 is a distinct possibility, which like you say is a bonus.

[ravinderjangra]

Hey @Nigel, Hope you are doing great.

I was hoping this would be helpful https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Forms.Visual.Material/4.3.0.991211 for your mobile endeavors.

Yes, we will be using Xamarin.Form.Visual.Material as the primary package to use material design components/controls in our mobile apps. Since this package doesn’t provide everything, in those cases we may implement something custom or use some other packages as well.

Let me know if this comes in handy at all or what approach you are already considering for something like the mobile SAFEnetwork APP.

We started to work on the SNAPP previously but that’s on hold for now. Currently, I’m focusing on the Authenticator app and mobile browser with pWeb features and planning to release the same in the upcoming weeks.

On the other hand if Dart is something the team plans on pursuing then that’s something we could contribute to it’s just not something that is cost and time effective for us to tackle on our own and then solely maintain.

It’ll be really great to see some contributions to this from the devs. If anybody wants to learn and start developing for the SAFE Network or generally mobile apps using C#, I’ll be more than happy to have a live coding session.

On the other hand if Dart is something the team plans on pursuing then that’s something we could contribute to it’s just not something that is cost and time effective for us to tackle on our own and then solely maintain.

Dart supports the use of native libs and those can be wrapped with a layer of dart APIs for library/app development like we are already doing for some other languages. We also thought to provide the support for the Flutter previously but the native lib support on mobile side with Dart wasn’t as mature as C#/Xamarin. Not sure if the status is still the same (maybe have to revisit).

Edit: just found this tool for porting in all material icons in googles library. Should be handy since visual material doesn’t have everything besides basics and presets AFAIK.

Thanks to bringing this up. I’ll definitely try using this.

[Nigel]

Hey @ravinderjangra big thanks on the reply.

Flutter as you said provides native cross platform support and what’s so nice about it using material design is the consistency and well, the aesthetics that it delivers. I really like the flexibility and options they have for a mobile UI experience but like you said it’s not quite as mature, used, or well known as C#, maybe one day. I’m sure you know all this but just want to iterate my thoughts aloud.

I’m glad to see you are going with the same Nuget package you are looking at and I hope the icon tool will be a big help (I think it will!) any custom stuff you guys do would be nice to possibly have access to so we could possibly build it up together, just a suggestion of course.

Again, if a Dart wrapper was of interest we could help there but the main reason I bring this up is to make sure that what is being mocked up currently is achievable with these Nuget packages and so we (JAMS) can be sure we are allocating our resources in the same direction as the @maidsafe team. That way we can get there faster and together.

Thanks again

[Nigel]

Hey @ravinderjangra just wanted to share this real quick as it seems like an all in one that is much better than my last suggestion. Check it out at the github page to see the images first.

GitHub - MaterialDesignInXAML/MaterialDesignInXamlToolkit: Google's Material...

MaterialDesignThemes 4.5.0

[ravinderjangra]

Hey @Nigel,

I quickly checked the GitHub page as you suggested and it seems to be providing all the controls. The only downside is it doesn’t support any mobile platform but it’s still wonderful. Maybe I’ll try to use it in some desktop apps (especially with GTK) and see how it works.

Thanks

[Nigel]

I jumped the gun on that one and soon realized the same. What a shame but maybe still useful in some capacity. Thanks Rav