“Your grandma doesn’t understand Bitcoin. She wouldn’t need to understand Ethereum”

Ethereum offers so much more than Bitcoin. Without getting too hung up on the technical inaccuracies of what I’m about to say, what Bitcoin offers is simply a single Ethereum DApp. And that’s pretty amazing by itself. But another important benefit of Ethereum’s enhanced capabilities is the fact that you can abstract away the Ethereum part to the average user. At least in theory.

The reality is that as of April 2018, using Ethereum DApps is still pretty darn complicated. First of all, you need to understand the whole concept of Ethereum (private key, signing transactions, communicating with the Ethereum blockchain). Then, as I mentioned earlier, you need to install something (a browser plugin, native mobile wallet, etc.). Assuming you were willing to do that, you now need to figure out how to purchase Ethereum and transfer the funds from the exchange to the wallet you just created. Oh, and you need to do it all over again on every new device, which also means managing multiple wallets (i.e multiple private keys). In a world where users are accustomed to using the same username and password to access a specific service across all their devices, this reality cannot fly.

For the average user, purchasing, safeguarding, and using Ethereum is hard and scary

Gateway as a Service

Portis offers users a gateway to the Ethereum network using the same account on all their different devices. Behind the scenes, users still maintain absolute control over their private keys, but the process is significantly simplified without compromising security.

In order to make the process of signing transactions as simple as possible, we abstract away stuff such as gas price and only ask the user how fast he wants it to happen.

All of this means that Portis offers users a familiar experience when using DApps, just like they’re used to from existing mainstream web applications. No muss, no fuss.

Why web?

If you go over the list of DApps on https://www.stateofthedapps.com/ and https://dappradar.com/ you’ll see that the majority of them are web-based. Which comes as little surprise, as most developers opt for web-first when starting new projects. You get a faster time-to-market and it (usually) works everywhere.

We believe that the Ethereum ecosystem deserves a means of interacting with DApps which doesn’t require the users or the developers to step out of the browser.

Users shouldn’t have to install anything in advance to use your DApp. With Portis, your DApp already comes bundled with a solution by offering them a simple in-browser username/password login method which feels familiar.

Those DApps don’t build themselves

It may be the average person who is creating accounts with Portis, but we are fully aware that it’s the DApp developers who will need to embrace the platform.

So first of all, we made sure the process of integrating Portis into an existing DApp is as simple as possible. Using the portis npm package would be a familiar experience for developers:

npm install portis

import & add portis as a Web3 Provider

That’s it. No registration required. No changes to your existing code. Portis handles all the rest, providing your users with a secure wallet that hooks into the standard web3.js method calls your DApp already contains. You can check out the full explanation here.

Since the Portis SDK runs inside your DApp’s domain, we couldn’t even think of any other possibility than releasing it as open source. We want… scratch that, we need feedback from the dev community. So go ahead and report bugs, request features, and if you’re feeling magnanimous even open a pull request or two.

“In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved” — Linus Torvalds

Safety first

Portis was born with the goal of providing a user-friendly and secure experience. To experience the user-friendliness one simply needs to create a Portis account and see for himself. Security on the other hand is not as visual.

We’ll explain how we maintain a simple experience without compromising security in our next blog post dedicated to the Portis security architecture.

What’s next?

We’re focused on continuing to build relationships with DApp creators. We want all decentralized applications to be easily accessible, be it from mobile, desktop or tablet.

If a device has a browser, it should be able to run a DApp right away.

We’re very excited to witness the true potential of the Ethereum ecosystem once mass adoption takes place, and we’re thrilled to be taking an active part in that process.

So what are you waiting for? Add Portis to your DApp today!