For about a year now, we have been updating the individual roadmaps of our projects which you can find linked from this thread:
Looking back at these threads now we think it’s pretty difficult to digest that information and really understand what’s going on behind the scenes with our team and projects.
So we’re going to change things up. Instead of continually updating the individual posts with edits and small checklists of updates, we’ll just be doing a monthly or bi-monthly post like this. In these posts we will focus on the projects we’re working on and what’s happened recently with them.
Anchor Wallet
Anchor has seen a lot of progress since our last update in April. We are now managing 3 independent versions of Anchor and are slowly beginning to standardize the experience across them all.
Anchor on Android
An early access version (currently 0.18.9) is available on the Google Play store now. Recently we enabled live networks in the app (EOS, FIO, Proton, Telos, WAX) and the app has been downloaded nearly 4,000 times over the last month or so. We have been busy fixing bugs and improving the user experience since our closed beta, and have now started working on integrating account creation similar to what we offer in the iOS version.
Anchor on iOS
Version 1.2.0 of Anchor has landed in the App Store which brings Fuel directly into the app. The app now has the capability to determine if you need resources to perform a transaction, and apply either free resources to the transaction or offer resources for a small fee. This new release also brings a number of bug fixes and UI improvements.
Anchor on iOS has reached a new milestone as well - we are seeing about 10,000 user sessions per week (for those that opt-in to anonymous analytics for iOS). The number is most likely much, much higher since users typically opt-out… but the trend upwards continues on as Anchor sees more adoption.
Anchor on Windows, macOS and Linux
Since our last update there have been 3 releases of Anchor for desktop platforms. 1.2.5 is the latest version, which was released earlier today. There are no fancy new features in these releases, they are primarily focusing in on the user experience and resolving issues reported by our users.
We estimate the user base for Anchor desktop has grown to approximately 10,000 - 20,000 users based on download statistics for each new release. We don’t track usage at all within Anchor so its hard to come up with an accurate assessment, so this is as close of an estimate as we can get.
Untitled Web Wallet
A couple weeks back we announced the early access release of our newest project, a web wallet designed to create the easiest user experience possible while integrating with Anchor. Our announcement of this project can be found below.
This web wallet is compatible with our 5 main networks (EOS, FIO, Proton, Telos, WAX) and we started with a focus on sending and receiving tokens. Our goal with this project is to create a unified interface for people to interact with EOSIO blockchains while using Anchor (and potentially other wallets in the future).
We have some pretty big plans with this project and hope it serves as the glue to tie all the different versions of Anchor (as an authenticator) together into one common experience.
Account Creation
Back in February of this year we introduced EOS account creation through the iOS version of Anchor.
Since then we have expanded this feature to Telos and WAX.
One of our primary focuses right now is to bring this capability to more users. We want to be able to offer account creation whether you’re using an iOS, Android, or even desktop computer. To do this we’re expanding our backend creation platform and creating new protocols for Anchor (and other wallets) to use.
In the not too distant future we should be able to offer in-app purchases for the Android version of Anchor, as well as allow account creation in our new web wallet.
Resource Management
Another one of our major focuses right now is automated resource management. Its far too complicated for users to deal with REX, PowerUp, Staking, CPU, NET, RAM, etc etc etc…
A few months ago we released a fee-based resource management system which many use today. It allows users to bypass all of these native systems and simply pay a fee whenever resources are required by their account in order to perform transactions. The next step in this process is to let users prepay for those resources - which we’re currently planning out and working on.
One of the things we had to accomplish first was to build the web wallet. This new web wallet is going to serve as the interface for account management, where you’ll be able to view resource usage, buy prepaid resources through Fuel (and potentially other services), and forget the complexities of the other systems we’ve all had to use in the past.
We currently do not have a timeline on the release for this - but will keep everyone posted as we continue to make progress.
SDKs
This section contains brief updates for the developer toolkits and libraries we actively maintain.
- anchor-link: We have released updates for the link library which contains UI improvements for in-app integrations, as well as session recovery and reconnection logic. This allows users who use multiple devices for Anchor (for example iOS + Desktop) to switch between devices without needing to log out and back in. The UI itself now also has some additional options to ease the user experience too - like an expandable QRCode and buttons to manually trigger the request if the session is not responding.
- greymass/eosio: A number of improvements have been made to our core eosio library which is used by all of our projects. We have improved a few of the API responses, fixed a number of bugs, and resolved a number of situations during serialization. Adoption of this library continues to grow as developers are starting to discover the benefits of having access to all the core types EOSIO has to offer.
Blockchain Snapshots
We are finally starting to automate some of our more manual tasks, and most recently we launched a snapshot service for a few blockchains we needed them for. We currently offer snapshots for EOS, WAX, and Jungle - with more planned to be added in the future. These snapshots are created every hour and are available at https://snapshots.greymass.network.
We currently are experimenting with using containers for some of our infrastructure and these snapshots will serve as the basis for the creation of those images.