Right now, I feel that the wallet applications are strictly utilitarian, and to be honest, far too technically-minded. My personal goal for the Peercoin wallet is to completely upend the status quo, and make it frictionless to use, much like Internet banking (and tools like Mint.com) radically simplified personal finances past the days of manually recording debits and credits in your checkbook ledger.
Concurrent with my work on trying to simplify the description / visualization of Proof-of-Stake, I’ve started to sketch out my thoughts on how the Peercoin wallet (client/server) application could evolve to be more attractive and easier to use than anything else on the market. As I was trying to visualize PoS, I realized that there was a lot of opportunity to use it for a model of how the whole wallet interface could evolve.
To help guide my first draft of the concept, I wanted to solicit feedback from you all, regarding how you feel about crypto wallets in general (Bitcoin-Qt, Litecoin-Qt, Armory, Electrum, etc.). Also, feel free to talk about what you like and dislike about the Peercoin client (as it currently stands, v.0.3.0), and what you think would make it better.
Questions to prime your thoughts:
[ul][li]Do you feel that cryptocurrency wallets provide all of the tools you need to manage your currencies? If not, what are they lacking?[/li]
[li]When you open up your wallet, do you feel that you have the ability to get a quick overview of the state of your finances?[/li]
[li]When you use your wallet to send or receive coins, do you have all the information you need to feel confident that the transaction was successful? If not, what part of the transaction process makes you the most nervous?[/li]
[li]If you were designing the next generation wallets, and nothing was impossible, what would you include?[/li]
[li]Think of a person you know who is open to new ideas, but who isn’t very technical. If they came to you and asked about getting set up with a Peercoin wallet, what would the application need to include to make it easy to get started?[/li]
[li]What information should the wallet make available to teach them about using Peercoin, specifically, and other cryptocurrency in general?[/li][/ul]
Your feedback is definitely appreciated, and I look forward to reading your responses. I plan on setting up a separate topic (or even a separate, linked site) to provide open access to the design process and concept versions, so we can move Peercoin’s tools forward as a community.
Thanks!