We are excited to announce that it’s now easier than ever to transact on a decentralized marketplace with the release of Origin Wallet — our first native mobile application available for iPhone on the App Store.

Origin Wallet in the App Store

When we launched our decentralized marketplace on Mainnet last year, we were excited for buyers and sellers to begin transacting on the platform and eager to learn from the data that would emerge and from the qualitative feedback that we would receive. It came as no surprise that there were user experience challenges that resulted from transacting on the blockchain. There are many obstacles that new users must face on Origin, from dealing with foreign concepts such as Ethereum wallets to understanding why Origin Messaging and notifications are so critical in a world where there is no centralized intermediary. It was somewhat unexpected, however, to see that roughly 80% of the traffic to our DApp came from mobile and tablet devices. This means that the vast majority of our potential buyers and sellers are coming to the Origin Marketplace without a web3-enabled browser and without a simple path to installing a browser extension like MetaMask. As a result, we saw users abandon the marketplace because they were unable to create a listing or make an offer to purchase or rent an item without switching to a different device.

Purchasing in mobile Safari via Origin Wallet

There are three critical functions that the first version of Origin Wallet serves:

Crypto Wallet

As the name implies, its core purpose is to be an Ethereum and Origin token wallet. You can securely store ETH or any ERC-20 token — including OGN — by transferring it to the account that is automatically generated when Origin Wallet is first opened. It also gives you the ability to confirm blockchain transactions that are initiated from the Origin DApp. As a result, iPhone users can enjoy a seamless experience making an offer or creating a listing from mobile Safari, and desktop users can do the same by linking one or more browsers to Origin Wallet.

Messaging

While its great to simplify the process of initially engaging with the marketplace as a potential buyer or seller, being able to correspond with a counterparty is critical to conducting a successful transaction. A buyer often has questions about a product that may need to be answered before making a binding offer. And once that offer is accepted, the seller may need to send or receive sensitive instructions, such as how to check in to a home or where to ship a product. That’s why we’ve integrated Origin Wallet with Origin Messaging automatically out of the box. All users will be capable of sending and receiving decentralized, secure messages simply by installing and running the application.

Notifications

Finally, transacting on the blockchain with real-world goods and services requires asynchronous interaction with a smart contract. After a listing is created, for example, a seller needs to be prompted when offers are made. She is unlikely to keep her browser open and regularly check to see if there are items requiring her attention. Similarly, a buyer should be notified when an offer is accepted or rejected. Origin Wallet uses push notifications to serve as your primary communication endpoint for messages and transaction updates. Buyers and sellers can now act quickly in response to an offer or message, which improves the quality of interactions and promotes the health of the marketplace.

What’s Next

The most exciting promise of Origin Wallet is that it will someday be used as the security component of other decentralized marketplaces that are built on the Origin Protocol. This will include not only browser-based DApp marketplaces built using our Marketplace Creator and our future developer APIs, but also fully custom DApps and mobile applications that developers can build on Origin without having to write their own smart contracts or learn Solidity. Origin Wallet can be responsible for the security concerns of key management and transaction signing while other stand-alone applications will be able to focus on user experiences and interfaces that are tailored to specific vertical marketplaces.

We will continue to iterate on this early version of Origin Wallet for iOS and work out any kinks that appear along the way. We know that Android accounts for the majority of mobile device market share and we’ll be working on our Android version next as we’re passionate about enabling global commerce. We encourage any interested front-end engineers to get involved and play a part in fulfilling our mission to enable true peer to peer commerce.

Please download Origin Wallet today and let us know what we can do to improve it. Our product development process is completely open and collaborative, and we appreciate all feedback and contributions.

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