Testing the Platform

As many of you may know, the team has onboarded a handful of community members to (stress-)test the entire platform prior to public release. I can proudly say that I was one of those few people who had the privilege of doing so. As it turns out, this process was much more thorough than I had predicted and as such I was able to bug-hunt their entire website and observe many of the improvements made over the past few weeks.

What’s peculiar to me is that even though I can be a nitpicker who criticizes minor details at times, the team remained open-minded, took note of my feedback and ultimately transformed my suggestions into code. Why’s that peculiar? It’s because their team is rather small with limited resources to their disposal, and these types of updates can be very time consuming and can feel irrelevant to some. In short, they genuinely appreciate our feedback and are doing not only what we ask them to, but actively pursue to make us happy. I believe that’s the best thing to do.

Dashboard Design

The first thing that caught my eye when I looked at the new NEXT user dashboard was the concept. Note: I’m not referring to the main website, but to the user dashboard which is currently still in closed beta and it is exactly what the NEXT ecosystem revolves around. In the future, this dashboard will be a user’s main playground. It includes access to the trading interface, your personal wallets, transactions overview, asset issuance, and general user profile related stuff. Through the navigation bar, which is completely disconnected from the main website, users can easily browse through the services provided by the platform.

It is a beautiful and clean white-smoke design, that is easy on the eyes and feels like a joy to browse. The dashboard is designed to be void of unnecessary stimuli while maintaining that sleek design. Not too much clutter that is distracting or too much detail in the design. I have to say that as I expected, the pages are highly intuitive as there aren’t many elements which are thrown at the user. And even though there are many trading platforms on the market with more advanced options and settings to personalize, I am certain that this design will grow on me despite being a guy with great appreciation for advanced tools & technology. Quick note: the team never even promised an advanced platform in the first place. All-in-all, I really love the look and feel of the dashboard.

We don’t want any nonsense and noise for traders.

Simple = Better – Gleb Jout, CEO

And lastly, as a small note, the designer of the visuals that are present on the main website (this time, not the dashboard) as well as all social feeds has earned my utmost respect. While many competing platforms use vibrant and energetic color schemes, NEXT took the opposite route: colors with low saturation. I can’t quite put my finger on it as to the why it’s so appealing, but it just is.

Example Visual taken from https://next.exchange/blockchain

Personal Wallet

One of the biggest problems in the crypto environment at this stage, is that centralized exchanges hold custody over all assets (i.e. private keys) offered on their exchange. Meanwhile, decentralized exchanges face serious issues with providing a nice user-experience and gaining decent adoption. That’s exactly where NEXT.exchange steps in: they hold zero custody over users’ assets while still giving users the impression of a centralized interface.

Within the user dashboard resides a “wallet” page in which all assets that belong to the user are displayed. Each asset contains the usual deposit & withdraw functionalities, the ability to view the private key, and lastly the option to trade that asset. The deposit function is accompanied by a unique QR code to make depositing even simpler. Upon withdrawing and/or viewing your personal private keys you’re required to enter your 2FA code. I thought this was a bug at first because I didn’t setup my 2FA for my test account. Later on, it became evident that this prompt was intentional: they’ve made 2FA mandatory to enhance personal security.

Screenshot of my NEXT Wallet including the Private Key QR-code.

Unfortunately for me, the backbone on which I’m testing on is a dummy blockchain. So, I’m really curious to see how it will work in practice though. But, regardless, the way that it is looking to be implemented is an interesting one and that is what I’m planning on exploring more in the future.