Disappointed with wallet experiences lately

Zcash Apps
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So I’ve had some pretty poor experiences with all shielded wallets recently:

Molasses-slow syncing, errors when they do sync, inexplicable sending issues, URIs and amount key/values not parsed, compatibility with network upgrades only after they occur…

I’ve got numerous friends for whom their only interaction with Zcash are these wallets, and frankly, it can be an embarrassing experience when they actually try to use them.

An example: dropping a couple dollars in a jar for coffee at PorcFest was far more stress-free than waiting endlessly for my wallet just to sync. That vendor had posted a Zcash QR code, but I gave up. What does a 75-second blocktime mean for real world payments if you first need minutes just to boot up? And if I resorted to fiat, how unlikely is the next person to use Zcash?

And today, a friend tried to access his wallet, but was confronted instantly with a user-unfriendly, unrecoverable error. I told him to import the seed into another wallet, and that one crashed twice and wouldn’t sync. (This latter wallet won’t even sync for me beyond 86% today.)

Zcash must deliver a world-class experience, or we’ll have new users giving up before they begin and requesting Venmo instead. This experience for 99% of intended users is at the mobile wallet level.

That Zcash needs a million-dollar marketing campaign now while the UX lacks a solid foundation is frankly upsidedown. What happens when the curious try using it for the first time?

What is this community doing to prioritise and deliver a real-world usable wallet experience? If there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, I’m praying the tunnel is nonetheless short.

(This is not to discourage or disparage those building whose efforts are greatly appreciated. My frustration though is real, as I really can’t onboard users suspecting I’ll be embarrassed the next time we send each other funds. Does anyone else feel this?)

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I agree with every word.

Ywallet is my primary Zcash wallet. Its fast. Its consistently dependable. Has never failed. Never broke (even when NU5 happened). Has many features other wallets dont have. Can have many accounts. (A bug I reported was fixed and released to the app store in the same day).

The best multicoin wallet for Zcash is Edge (uses slow sync) and the best Zcash only wallet is Ywallet.

We cant spend on marketing if the product isnt good.

Insert here sad emoji…

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(It sucks your recent experiences with tipping Zcash and stuff have been sub-par but I think tipping with cash will always be more convenient by the shear number of actions you have to execute ya know assuming that your already holding it. Don’t knock cash: it’s the closest thing we got to Zcash out here in the meatspace! Use it!)

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I defend cash! :statue_of_liberty: But while perhaps realistic for the time being, the advice is reminsicent of a Bitcoin Maxi suggesting to just use credit cards because of high BTC transaction fees. :wink: It’s a critical problem worth solving, because we want Zcash to be 10x+ better than cash; and as it affects not just tipping, but every good or service or application using ZEC.

If you haven’t been to PorcFest, it’s a festival of thousands of people where almost everything is for sale with cybercoins. It was the epicentre for real-world Bitcoin usage in the early 2010s. Lots of user experience lessons to be learnt over the years there. Sadly, Bitcoin Cash was far more usable this time around (but far less private) than Zcash!

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It’s anecdotal but in the last few days syncing on both Ywallet and Zecwallet Lite has failed for me.

It’s on Ubuntu 20.04 with Ywallet v1.2.5+234 and Zecwallet 1.7.9 btw

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You have an old version of YWallet it seems. You should update. Then, if you have issues, I’m sure you could mention to @hanh

My current version is showing 1.2.8+248

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Screenshot_20220706-142219
Screenshot_20220706-1422191080×2160 169 KB

Lately blocks have been larger. Make sure that your internet is fast enough.

That’s 5.54 M Bytes / sec

In case of doubt, try connecting to your own instance of LWD. In my experience, 90% of the time the slowdown was due to an issue with the Internet.

A full scan downloads a lot of data still.

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Same experience here, tried to sync my Nighthawk wallet the other day, took ages and then failed when scanning, looks lke I’ll have to restore from seed.

Tried to send a transaction with Zecwallet during the NFT whitelisting which failed. Plus I’ve had quite a few other issues in the recent past.

How much funding have each of these wallets received?

I’ve switched to Ywallet as my daily driver and haven’t encountered a single issue yet, love it.

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Happy you created this forum post. Last ZEC transaction I executed it took me litterally ~12 hours to get it done. Switched between wallets. Slow sync or just stuck. Transaction not visible nor broadcasted.

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As the author of Ywallet but also as a user of zcash, I am disappointed that the ECC and ZF almost never mention Ywallet.

Most of the new users will never hear about it and they will be driven away by the poor UX of the recommended wallets.

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Some context on this from ECC

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While I agree with this particular comment. I also remember that you did refuse suggestion of ZCG to integrate the improvement you made to ECC wallet SDKs librustzcash. Collaboration goes both ways I believe.

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I did not refuse integration. I just don’t want to do it myself. They are free to do the work. The code is on GitHub.
Come on, the wallet is already free and received no funding. You also expect me to integrate in other apps?
And why isn’t this ever mentioned for blazesync?

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They did not expect you to do it for free. They didn’t ask you to work on other apps either, but to integrate your improvement to librustzcash which can be used by other apps in the ecosystem.

I’m not criticizing your decision to take an offer or not, it is up to you what do you want to work on. Just that collaboration is a two-way road.

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Well, let me say that I find this a strange kind of collaboration. I think I’d be better off not having developed it.

Again, I ask: why don’t they request Blazesync integration?

Anyway, I make an app for free but because I don’t want to integrate it, other users should be penalized. I honestly don’t get it. It’s the ECC/ZF mission to promote the best zcash experience.

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I don’t know. I’m not in the ZCG and I don’t work for ECC or ZF.

Have you thought that maybe they have no experience with Ywallet and don’t want to promote something they have never used? Have you tried reaching out to them (ECC or ZF)?

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Well, shouldn’t they try it? If I was making a coin, I’d try everything that contributes to its ecosystem.

Many users of Ywallet (back when it was Zwallet) have reached out. I have personally reached out to zookoo. They know about it for sure.

Btw, integration into librustzcash is pretty hard and very tedious. Just not my cup of tea.

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Back to the topic, I think more than ever we need OMR integration into lightwalletd. We don’t want user phones to keep trial-decrypting spam transactions in the future.

cc @thomaslzy :saluting_face:

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I was wondering if these issues are really related to the wallet itself, or to lightwalletd.

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I don’t understand why Ywallet doesn’t get more love from official channels. It is well battle tested at this point.

What does it take to get it listed on the z.cash website?

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