Nimiq: Past, Present & Future

Blog Series — Ecosystem

While working on upgrades to performance and scalability of the Nimiq Network, we are pursuing improvements to the Nimiq user interfaces in parallel. As part of these efforts, we decided to:

Use Vue.js for our future UI development and

Rewrite the Nimiq Keyguard to be free of dependencies for better code review and

Open the Nimiq Keyguard to third parties

Next, we want to rewrite the Nimiq Safe using Vue.js, implement the Nimiq Wallet for convenient day-to-day use, and last not least also provide some form of styling and branding guide for the Nimiq Ecosystem.

Vue.js by Evan You, used under CC BY 4.0

Vue.js

Following a period of research, we have decided to use Vue.js for our upcoming front-ends. React was another consideration due to its larger market share, but Vue.js ended up convincing us for the following reasons:

Clean separation of code and markup

Open source governance, no dependence on a company

Shorter learning curve

Focused on simplicity: better presets, less configuration

Smaller file size

Support for calculated and cached values on top of state values

Nimiq Keyguard

As major step in the near future, we plan to rewrite the Nimiq Keyguard. It is responsible for encrypting and storing the user’s private keys as well as signing and securing transactions. It is the Nimiq Ecosystem’s component with the highest security requirements.

By focusing the rewrite on security hardening, our goal is to simplify the architecture as well as removing all dependencies and thus inherently also simplifying continuous code review. Additionally, we consider making use of code signing in the future so that malicious code manipulation becomes more preventable.

After the rewrite and successful code review, we expect to open up the Nimiq Keyguard for third-party applications allowing Nimiq payment to be integrated into other applications as smooth and simple as payments with PayPal.

Nimiq Safe

Working towards highly usable UIs, the onboarding process of the Nimiq Safe has been improved by adding an introductory welcome and guiding less experienced users by explaining what the Nimiq Safe is and how it can be used.

As future improvement we want to rewrite the Nimiq Safe using Vue.js which will allow more efficient interface changes of future releases as well as code sharing with the upcoming Nimiq Wallet. Both, the future Nimiq Wallet and Safe are planned to have multi-language support taking full advantage of our in-house native speakers covering English, Chinese, Spanish, and German (in addition to our motivated and very helpful community members!).

Nimiq Wallet

The vision for paying with NIM is that it can be used as part of every day payment routines, in a most convenient way. While the Nimiq Safe is focused on safety and consequently geared towards desktop use, the idea for Nimiq Wallet is to be more focused on ease-of-use for smaller transactions, directly from your smartphone and mobile platform. In the long run, our ambitions are to compete with contactless payment systems such as Visa PayWave or Apple Pay in terms of speed, simplicity, and user experience.

Branding and Styling Guide

On our way to mainstream adoption and upon requests from the avid Nimiq community, we intend to provide a style guide for systems, applications, and information using or refering to Nimiq. This guide will look to include resources such as the Nimiq font, logo, and signet.

P2P Exchange

Efforts on getting Nimiq listed on exchanges — some of which are P2P — have lead to first results and are still in progress. In parallel, community efforts such as Nimex.app have been set up making use of the atomic swap ability with Ethereum. Both approaches allow Nimiq users to buy, sell, and exchange NIM already. Given this fact, we have decided to lower the priority of building another custom P2P exchange platform in favor of putting resources towards essential payment interfaces and processes such as the Nimiq Safe, Wallet and NIM check-out process.

Follow Nimiq on Twitter, Discord and Telegram to be notified about updates on Nimiq Keyguard, Safe, and Wallet. The next planned post in this series will cover most recent upgrades and research efforts.