The direction of Scatter

Some thoughts on where I think that we are going

The latest version of Scatter was released this past week. It was months in the making and I think it successfully proved that the burgeoning partnership between Nathan and I can produce high-quality software at a furious pace. He’s a beast. Showing that a team can produce proves that a team has a future. I think that we can produce.

What was most important for me was that it gave me the opportunity to really dig through every part of Scatter and understand all its use-cases and edge-cases. It was enthralling because through this project I was introduced to this niche and off-the-beaten-path technology space. There is amazing energy in these communities filled with people who have this singular focus of building the next big thing. It feels like tech in the 90s where new beasts were being wrought from the sleepy coals of previous paradigms.

Now that I have all of Scatter wedged into my head, I am starting to play with the idea of what it could be. Right now it is a complicated password mechanism for signing into things. Semantics aside, I think that we are at a crossroads where it comes to defining the overarching vision of what we want to build. Do we want to continue down this specific path or do we want something else? Steam became something else besides a way to get games. Discord, too.

So what do we think Scatter can be?

We think Scatter can sit as a layer above — as a singular point of consistent entry to all blockchain networks. No more using two or three (or more!) different wallets to manage our funds and applications. Why should we, as users, have to deal with managing all of that information? Why should we have to juggle all those cognitive shifts just to use the dapps we want and perform the same basic actions across all networks?

We want to step into the role as a platform

To get there we know that we need a few key pieces

Translated Scatter — we now support Italian, Chinese, and Russian (and Pirate, arr). It is critical for us that our international users are first-class citizens. I want to personally thank Timur Timak for the Russian translation, Manu for the Italian translation, and Kai Jing from EOS42 and Thomas from EOS.fish for the Chinese translation. You guys were amazing! For anyone that wants to help us with translations, please check out the DesktopTranslations repo.

Scatter Apps — A centralized repository for exploring and using all the new decentralized apps that are available on the EOS and Tron networks.

Scatter Bridge— A way to simply introduce external users to blockchain networks without them needing anything more than an email address. The dapp itself can buy and fund the new EOS account. The users never need to know they are using a blockchain. If they ever want to grow into an advanced user, they already have an account and can use it in Scatter Desktop or Mobile. This is working for us now and we are a matter of months from wider release. Click here to see the code.

Scatter Exchange — Once you are into Scatter and have an EOS account with some funds in it, perhaps you’d like to dip into some games on Tron? We will allow users to exchange their EOS tokens to ETH or TRX so that they can explore some of the games or exchanges that are easily accessible via the builtin Scatter Apps list. These are the shots from our upcoming release:

Easy Scatter Exchange your EOS for ETH or TRX

Manage your funds in a simple panel.

Scatter Stabilize — A way for users to ride out the volatility storms of the markets by buying Stable coins which are tethered to their fiat counterparts.

So, who wants to play with us?