Dapp development is a relatively new skill. Programming a blockchain game or app usually requires a new language to learn for the back end. And a new library for the front end browser interface. With all these new technologies, and little documentation, the last thing on a developers mind is making the interface user friendly. And early dapps reflected that!

When we started work on our dapp Space Miners we quickly realized that the gap between what the user saw going on, and what the application was doing, become disjointed. Transactions would often fail, or stall, and getting all those messages to the user felt like an annoying after thought. "We will get to that later" was often the sentiment. The other often overlooked problem with blockchain applications is the complicated onboarding experience. Sure some Bitcoin veteran may know how to navigate their way through your vague instructions, but how are you going to get your mainstream adoption with zero support for the crypto noob?

That's when we found Blocknative. Blocknative is a free Notification Framework for dapps and wallets which also features a helpful onboarding flow for when your users first happen upon your application. We were able to easily integrate Blocknative through their npm library. Signing up through their portal meant free analytics too. We were also able to style their UI easily in our code, and seamlessly blend their components with ours. Their transaction awareness gave us back the control we needed to let the user know what was happening.

We were so happy with Blocknative in the end, we used it again in our latest dapp, People's Casino. In fact, Blocknative has become such an indispensable tool to us, we can't imagine developing a blockchain application without it.