A few months ago while developing our delegate website and using Gravatar, it came across our minds that nothing similar currently exists in our crypto world. We think this is a missed opportunity, as personalisation is an important part of making crypto far more user friendly and we feel a service like Gravatar for crypto is something every user could enjoy so we set out to make Arkvatar!

The Crypto Public Address

Addresses are everywhere and at the moment the current option is just a plain old boring string, which is not only daunting to look at, but it’s impossible to remember, recognise and actually take into consideration the user behind the wallet. We think we can do better than that.

So what is Arkvatar? Arkvatar is a service similar to Gravatar, but orientated in a manner to fit the crypto landscape. An Arkvatar is a unique character randomly generated and linked to your address that is then coupled with a QR code. Each address will always be tied to the Character/QR combo that they are assigned, in order for consistency whilst maintaining a good level of personalisation.

We’re supporting currently 8 different projects: Ark, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Neo, Monero, Stellar and Cardano.

Your Own Unique Character

Every Arkvatar image is divided into six parts with the main area being the character which takes up three parts and a whole host of combinations. These six parts are selected by our algorithm which will generate a QR Code, Gradient and a full character similar to the one you can see under this paragraph. The possible combinations tally to around 27,000,000 at the moment.. and more parts will be added over time, increasing the combinations we’ll have.

The Arkvatar representing us, TheGoldenHorde

We pride ourselves on working with great artists and really putting some passion into the artwork. We have created all of these graphics and we hope you like them!

A Beautiful Gradient — Linked To The Specific Project

The background colours of your Arkvatar is randomly generated and based on the address you provided. The gradients are:

Ark — Dark Red/Light Red Gradient

Bitcoin — Dark Orange/Light Orange Gradient

Stellar — Silver/Grey Gradient

Ethereum — Silver/White Gradient

Neo — Light Green/Dark Green Gradient

Monero — Dark Orange/Brown Gradient

Ripple — Light Blue/Dark Blue Gradient

Cardano — Dark Green/Black Gradient

The QR Code

Each Arkvatar will have an embedded QR code. Once scanned this QR code will bring you to the explorer of the matching cryptocurrency, so if you scan your Ark Arkvatar you will be redirected to your wallet on the official explorer of Ark.

The Benefits Of Pictures

It is no secret that humans find it far easier to memorise and remember graphical data than word sets, this has even been named as the Picture Superiority Effect. Going further, studies have been conducted to show that as we age our memory processing of words decreases, yet picture processing remains fairly steady. If we add pictures to crypto addresses we can achieve a multitude of successes all relating to the user friendliness of cryptocurrency whilst making crypto more accessible to every generation no matter the age. Pictures have been told to tell a 1000 words and we’re hoping Arkvatar can do just that.

By having pictures then a user can feel more connected to those they have frequent contact with on the network (sending / receiving to common wallets) will be obvious due to their Arkvatar picture which can create a good feeling of belonging and a recognition of those who participate on the network that isn’t achievable from an unrecognisable string of letters/numbers.

Developers can also implement the Arkvatar system into the tx panel so you’ll be able to verify an address is correct when sending txs by glancing at the Arkvatar. This should make it far harder to slip up and use the wrong address.

Not only this but it’s also easy to identify the cryptocurrency associated to the image just by a quick glance as the gradient of the picture is linked to the cryptocurrency the address is associated with.