My experience and thoughts about Utopia EcosystemWebsiteUtopia website is not bad. A bit Matrix-like as fonts and color scheme, but it’s OK. The URL is short, which is nice, but a bit too short, one can easily forget it.
The currencies page contains a fair number of exchanges, but sadly for an anonymous coin, all seem to need registration (including Crypton Exchange which I expected it’s somehow Utopia’s exchange).
The merchants area is somewhat crowded, which is great, just may need arranging better those entries. I mean that it’s impressive to see such a number of merchants, but since their number should grow, it will become even more crowded – from categories to merchant descriptions. The categories always take that vast space and… I would not expect people go page by page, maybe it won’t hurt to implemet it maybe like Twitter does and/or give detailed information only where needed.
For downloading the app all major OS are covered. If I insist to be picky I’d say that portable versions would be nice too. I’ve installed it to a Windows 10 system and to a Linux Mint. This will allow me play around a little more.
Utopia applicationFirst contactShortly: both impressive and overwhelming
The welcome screen is a mix of welcome information and initial setup, it can be confusing. Actually the whole application, while it’s
impressively big and covering a lot of areas, it can be overwelming for newcomers. I recommend considering 2 modes – simple and advanced mode – with the simple mode showing much less menu entries, tabs and parts/information. I’ve worked with 1000s of programs, still Utopia was for me both impressing and crowded/overwelming at the first contact. Because of this the ideas I’ll write down may also not be greatly structured.
Data TrafficWhile running Utopia app, even if I’m completely synchronized, there’s constant data traffic. Even more, if I want to switch to low traffic mode, the dialog tells my anonymity level will decrease (plus, in the way it’s written, a newbie will be scared of doing that if he will ever find out the setting). So one question is: now, with Utopia being rather young, I see a constant 300-500 KB/s, will this increase significantly if Utopia will have 1000s of more nodes, or will at least remain in this kind of limits?
I’ve given a chance to low traffic mode too for a while and the traffic was much nicer. And the (chat) messages were still realyed instantly.
Start with WindowsIt’s nice to have Utopia starting with the computer since it always has to sync data, get messages and mails and so on, but … I’m not sure what is the point of the “remember me” check is it asks me for password on each startup. Or is it a bug? Even more, if one is not logged into (auto-started) Utopia all day, at the end the Windows shutdown will complain about it (because it doesn’t end gracefully).
Chat, messaging, gamesI’ve made myself two accounts on two systems (the main on Win10 and then a secondary on Linux Mint). It’s interesting (in a good way) that friend requests must be accepted. However, there’s something that doesn’t make much sense, unless I’m missing something: chat and mail seem to work on the same principle (only to accepted friends), .. so why does Utopia have both?! Is it just for user preference (mails can become more organized)? I find this redundant.
In the chat it may be useful to add an extra space at the end of smilies to avoid the situation the second simile looks broken.
I’ve played Chess (with myself). Nice feature to add the game! One thing I’ve noticed was that at least once a move (fully done) was not shown on the opponent’s screen until he tried to make himself the new move. I guess it’s a small glitch, still, it worth telling.
uWalletThe money operations were fast and straightforward to make. I really liked this wallet.
uWallet : uWalletI find it somewhat redundant to have two columns for pretty much the same job, but that’s me (in some cases the second column does actually have a good use). At least then the coin of choice could span on top of both. But, again, maybe it’s only me.
It’s nice to be able to send transactions directly to friends by selecting them by name. This is a great newbie-friendly feature!
I’ve seen that I cannot send for example .5 CRP, I must enter 0.5; not a real problem, but it can be improved.
If you want to make it even more newbie friendly you may want to add a bit more info about the network fee at transactions, so they don’t get scared by “The payment amount exceeds your balance” red message.
The transactions went out fast and I was able to send back also instantly (are there no confirmations?!). It worth mentioning that they went out instantly even on Low Traffic Mode.
uWallet : Crypto CardSince I had only 5 CRP at all I didn’t play with the Crypto Card feature, since it would cost 3 CRP and I would have been using it maybe twice.
By my understanding it’s sort of virtual card equivalent on the Utopia network, working with CRP, but hiding your real address. Interesting!
Request cryptonsThis was the reason I wanted to make the Crypto Card for: it seems that I can make a bill and request CRP
only from a card (why that? It should not matter what is the bill paid with..).
I’ve found something else of interest here. “View exchanges list” sends us (in a new clearnet browser) to the uTalk forum and not the Exchanges on the main website. Is it intentional? I don’t know.
uWallet : Network feeI’ve found it buried under “Treasury data”
The fees are tiny, especially since CRP is also small value for now.
uWallet : Swap and uVoucherInterestingly some of the swaps were slower (maybe 1 minute), although the price was worse than what I’ve seen at exchanges. I’ve got spoiled with too many instant things. It’s OK, it’s not actually slow.
I’ve made UUSD uVoucher. It was 100% straightforward to create it. Also 100% straightforward to activate it.
uWallet : ShopThis opens the merchants page in default browser, on the clearnet. Is that OK? I guess it depends from person to person, but for a privacy oriented platform this may need a bit of improvement (at least asking/telling the user what’s going to happen).
I’ve already said my opinions on merchant pages, I’ll only add that I’ve found one (odin) with the preview image telling “Sorry, you have been blocked” and (expectedly) not working.
Buying goods/services with Utopia coinsI’ve chosen something cheap to buy in order to see how this works. The merchants page gave some quick instructions – basically to select Perfect Money. And yes, in a subsequent step, CRP and UUSD were available for payment.
When I’ve gave the OK, a countdown timer has started (from 15 minutes, I think), plenty of time to send the money.
Right after my CRP transaction was sent, the countdown timer stopped, telling “Status: Confirming”. That took a bit longer and my guess is that there the CRPs were converted to USD for the merchant. But it was smooth, it went on, the merchant was happy and sent me the e-mail with the service details I’ve bought.
ConclusionsUtopia ecosystem is impressively rich in features and works very good. Some small improvements could be needed here and there, but nothing really big.
It may worth telling those very concerned about their privacy that the system sometimes sends them onto clearnet browser.
The trick of going trough PerfectMoney ensures the ecosystem’s coins can be spent at a pretty impressive list of merchants.
Both are just under 2 USD in total. 
