At 0x, our mission is to create a tokenized world where all value can flow freely. We’ve made some initial progress towards our mission by helping a number of talented teams launch relayers that have collectively facilitated more than $170M of ERC20 trading volume. However, to achieve mainstream adoption, we must overcome significant UX challenges associated with self-custody and on-boarding new users to the world of decentralized applications. Today we are pleased to release the brand new 0x Portal, a dApp for user on-boarding, education and relayer discovery.

Motivation

As the number of tokens on public blockchains increases, we believe that many dozens of relayers will emerge to serve different market niches and communities. While each relayer may be unique, the process of setting up an Ethereum account to use 0x protocol is always the same regardless of the relayer you need to use. 0x Portal is intended to serve two primary functions:

User education and on-boarding Relayer discovery

Interacting with the Ethereum blockchain through a dApp exposes many sharp UX edges that don’t exist in other web applications. Communicating the concept of Ethereum accounts and private keys is challenging, teaching a user how to interact with a decentralized exchange is even more so. Relayers have identified user on-boarding as a critical process for driving user growth and have created a variety of on-boarding flows.



Portal provides a universal on-boarding flow that we think works well. In just three steps, your wallet is ready to trade on any and all 0x relayers. This is in contrast with centralized exchanges, where users must create multiple accounts, setup security precautions such as 2FA, and go through tedious deposit/withdraw processes. Not only does 0x protocol empower the user to control their own funds, it empowers them to easily access liquidity wherever it may be located.

Portal provides an interactive on-boarding experience that guides new users through the process of wallet configuration.

Portal’s on-boarding flow was created after conducting a series of user-research sessions for a set of users with varying levels of knowledge about cryptocurrency and exchanges. The exercise surfaced many UX pain points within the on-boarding process for 0x. We took the learnings from these sessions to synthesize flows, visual cues and explanations that reduce cognitive load. If you want to learn more about the user-research process, please check out this excellent article by Ola Orchowska from Wicketh Ventures who helped us conduct the study.

User-research helped inform the design of visual cues used to educate new users.

From here, we plan to further improve Portal’s on-boarding flow and maximize user conversion (percentage of new users that use a relayer for the first time). Portal will also serve as a base for future user education initiatives around NFT trading and new features within 0x v2 and other future updates.



The new 0x Portal is also intended to increase relayer discoverability. Many excellent relayers exist today and we continue to learn about new teams emerging. In much the same way that people use Yelp to find the perfect restaurant to suit their needs, we believe that a discovery tool like Portal will be needed to help users find the right relayer.

Portal works on Toshi and Cipher browser as well, trade on mobile!

Future Work

0x Portal provides a foundation for user on-boarding that we will continue to iterate on and improve. As more relayers come online, 0x Portal will make it easier to discover new markets and marketplaces. Major features which we hope to add in the future include:

Searching and filtering relayers

Improved WETH flow

Deep linking directly into specific relayer markets

NFT support in the wallet component

Education for the 0x v2 migration

Better visualization and management of pending transactions

Localization

Join Us In Our Mission

If you want to help us create a tokenized world where all value can flow freely, check out our website for open roles.

Note: If your relayer is missing from 0x Portal, submit a pull request to the 0x relayer registry (PRs merged upon mainnet launch).