I received the 5 CRP to review the app yesterday from the team. Here's my review, hope it helps.
Test system: Macbook Air M1, 8GB RAM, 40 Mb/s fiber internet connection for connectivity. I boot the system (Mac Monterey 12.2.1) from an external SSD with 300 MB/s read and write speed. While this is arguably slower than internal SSD, I run other apps just fine (DaVinci Resolve, OBS, Gimp, etc) as long as it is not swapping intensive since it requires fast SSD read/write speed.
User interface:
- The login UI is clean, other than "Remember me" being a bit confusing since it doesn't save the password and only the username/account container, I don't find any issue. I use a password manager (KeePassXC in this case) to manage my password, but it doesn't detect the field of the Utopia wallet. I don't know if this can be solved by changing the code of the app or not, but I'd definitely like it if I can just automatically fill the form without doing manual copy-paste for security purposes.
- The default window after logging in is windowed. I can change it easily either via manually resizing with my mouse or using an extension like Rectangle, however, it doesn't automatically change the size of tabs in the Mailbox section on the dashboard. It is not that much of an issue but if it also automatically changes size based on the window size the user currently has, it would be a nice QoL change.
- If I right-click on any transaction history, under Copy Public Key there are three buttons/menus that have a long name with no clear functionality for end-users. The only thing that is clear is probably the "Copy" part, but it doesn't look really good. If this is intended, consider changing the name to something simpler instead, since other menus are quite clear (Copy, Deselect all, Export, etc). Please check the image for clarity.
- There is no option to check a transaction status from a mempool explorer or something similar from the wallet history. If there is, I can't seem to find it. I also tried to check the TX ID from any online Utopia explorer but it is quite difficult to do so. I used
https://explorer.utopiaecosystem.com/txid to check it (don't know if it is official or not) but they only show block data without any individual detail. Since this seems to be an intended behavior if we look at the "Verify transaction" page, I hope the team considers adding the ability to see if a transaction is confirmed or pending directly on the wallet/dashboard page. I can imagine a situation where somebody claims they've sent CRP but the other party can't check it at all because they don't check the menu of the app and rely on the history page/block explorer to see them.
Features:
- I received 5 CRP to test the app. I used 3 CRP to create a new crypto card. The creation process is quite fast so that's a plus. Other than changing the color and name, there's no other customization feature available. I don't think it's a big problem for me, but some users probably expect more if they need to pay to issue it. Changing the font type is probably a good thing to add if the team plans to add more customization for this.
- The requested feature needs the user to know the payer crypto card ID. At first, I thought it functions like other request invoices where anyone can pay the charge requested by the user, but since it wasn't, there might be some difficulties for users who want to request some payment with no specific payer in mind. That being said, they can still use the public key. There is also no copy/contact feature on the request page, so the user has to copy them from their contact list. I think it would be nice if they can access their contact's crypto card ID directly from the request page.
- The second feature that I tested with the CRP is the uVoucher feature. I use 1 CRP to create a new uVoucher code and it processed instantly. Using the newly created code was also quick. Overall, I don't see any issue with this feature in my testing.
- I tried to stake my CRP to miners, but I encountered some difficulties since I need to find their public key address and so on. It would be better if a user can access the miners' addresses directly from the app, with their information (if it is publicly available, such as their Telegram group, etc) to make it easier for them to decide which miner is the best for them. I find several projects do this from their mining/staking page, and it is very helpful for them.
Performance:
- I downloaded the dmg file from the website. The file is around 300 MB, and installing the app takes around 600 MB on my drive. Opening the app for the first time doesn't take that long. However, I find that it always lags a lot when opening the Channels tab. Opening the channel tabs always spikes the RAM consumption by a lot. At one point, the app just consumed 500 MB of RAM, but if I open the Channels page, it shot up to 4 GB. While my setup might contribute to the stutter/slow issue, I don't think requiring 4 GB of RAM just to open the channel page is a good thing.
- I don't find any issues regarding network synchronization. It's quite fast and smooth. I notice that Utopia seems to be constantly downloading/uploading to peers with an average of 500 KB/s bandwidth. Personally, this is not an issue for me, but somebody with a limited internet quota might have to keep this in mind. If possible, I think the team should lower this bandwidth consumption or allows the user to limit the network usage of the app directly. While there is an option to opt out from contributing to the network on the Preferences page, I think it would be great if a user can participate with their own bandwidth rule.
Overall impression:
Overall, the app is quite nice. I can imagine using it daily if I interact a lot with the Utopia ecosystem to manage my CRP. Other than the performance issue when opening the Channel page, there is no other major issue that I find in my testing. Some quality-of-life changes would improve the app and make it easier for users to contribute to the network, mainly by delegating their CRP to miners or relaying the network data.