Walletwasabi: Upgrade wasabiwallet.io

[mayankchhabra]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Wasabi Wallet's website, as it stands today, is more oriented towards BTC users who already have a good understanding of concepts such as fungibility, anonymity, and privacy in general. I think we are missing out the opportunity to get the attention of the other portion of users who still have to realize the importance of fungibility in BTC. Other than that, there are no screenshots on the website, no links to guides and important articles (which exist in the guides repo), and is overall under-designed.

Describe the solution you'd like

I believe we have a big opportunity here to revamp the overall user interface of the website and introduce the following sections:

1. Friendlier introduction (hero section)
2. List complete feature set (eg. integrated Tor, in-built coin-joins, label transactions, etc)
3. Graphic Illustrations such as how Chaumian CoinJoin works
4. Educating the user in simple form regarding fungibility, privacy, anonymity sets, etc.
5. Screenshots, How-Tos (eg. how to perform a CoinJoin in Wasabi)
6. FAQs section

Describe alternatives you've considered

Let the current website run, and miss out on a huge opportunity. "Anonymity loves company"; we need to drop the jaws of the other portion of BTC users, who also turn out to be the majority, and in turn get more liquidity in the CoinJoins to make many more BTCs fungible.

[lontivero]

Ack. I like the idea of having screenshots because every time I see a wasabi screenshot I say "wow..!" even when I am one of the developers. List of features and FAQs are a must IMO too. About graphic illustrations explaining how chaumian coinjoin works, I think we need a video for beginners.

[nopara73]

Great idea! However there are some serious limitations we are working with this website.

1. maintainability - The content should never be updated. -> no news and articles
2. no monster commits, start with small incremental improvements
3. no JS, only HTML+CSS
4. no packages, npm, nugets, external packages, etc...
5. no cookies
6. 
   
   
   
   1. there may be others, not sure, read back on the issues here
   
   

Friendlier introduction (hero section)

ACK. We either have an issue about it or I have it written to myself.

List complete feature set (eg. integrated Tor, in-built coin-joins, label transactions, etc)

NACK. It's misinformation. These things tend to be forgotten and not updated when changes happen.

Graphic Illustrations such as how Chaumian CoinJoin works

ACK. Great idea!

Educating the user in simple form regarding fungibility, privacy, anonymity sets, etc.

NACK. Creating such guides those don't get out of date and will stay still relevant over time is an impossible job at this point: Wasabi is a toddler now. It's going to go through a bunch of things as it grows up.

Screenshots, How-Tos (eg. how to perform a CoinJoin in Wasabi)

Screenshots for aesthetic is great! Howtos are not. They get out of date right away. Btw have you checked the Dojo from the website? There's the content Wasabi users can go through.

FAQs section

I am not sure if FAQ is very useful. I feel like every FAQ entry is just an excuse to not solve those problems. I am also afraid I'd use it extensively and I would end up being like the customer support of [insert any large company here] and just direct users to the FAQ all the time, which I think it's somewhat rude, since you're basically saying that the context of the user's question is not important. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure I'm against it either. End of brainstorming.

Wasabi Wallet's website, as it stands today, is more oriented towards BTC users who already have a good understanding of concepts such as fungibility, anonymity, and privacy in general.

Yeah we can take down a few things. For example this number is too large to mean anything anymore:

The intro is too long:

Other than that, there are no screenshots on the website, no links to guides and important articles (which exist in the guides repo)

That's not true:

, and is overall under-designed.

That's true.

Let the current website run, and miss out on a huge opportunity. "Anonymity loves company"; we need to drop the jaws of the other portion of BTC users, who also turn out to be the majority, and in turn get more liquidity in the CoinJoins to make many more BTCs fungible.

IMO we don't need nice peers' liquidity anymore, the system is bootstrapped already, so we should sooner or later stop this message, because the context has changed.

[mayankchhabra]

Acknowledge the limitations while working with the website.

It's misinformation. These things tend to be forgotten and not updated when changes happen.

I think Wasabi's core set of features, such as CJs, transaction labeling, Tor implementation (till BIP 156 is implemented) don't seem to be going away in the near feature. We can, meanwhile, have them listed on the website - because these features are what make Wasabi the #1 privacy wallet for BTC. The upkeep should not be hard once we roll out new features/remove current features as the HTML code would only require a change of text without the need of styling.

Creating such guides those don't get out of date and will stay still relevant over time is an impossible job at this point

Good point!

Screenshots for aesthetic is great! Howtos are not. They get out of date right away. Btw have you checked the Dojo from the website? There's the content Wasabi users can go through.

Agreed! Yes, I have gone through the Dojo repo, and the concept of gamifying community contributions is great! A more highlighted link of Dojo, with perhaps a subtitle explaining what it is, could help the newcomers who won't instantly understand what's there in the link.

I am not sure if FAQ is very useful. I feel like every FAQ entry is just an excuse to not solve those problems.

I understand your perspective. At the same time, there are in fact some things are very much limited to Wasabi Wallet's experience and are new to users. One of them, for example, is getting banned to participate in CJ. A lot of users tend to go on Reddit, create new posts and basically find other channels to understand what the hell does it mean to get banned. Wouldn't it be simpler if we just had an FAQ section with the question: "Why did I get banned from participating in a CJ?"

Overall, we have a pretty solid foundation here to get started!

[mayankchhabra]

First iteration of the website design (only the introductory aka hero section)

[mayankchhabra]

A couple of issues as pointed out by @nopara73 in the Slack thread:

Next, the obvious issue is the dark theme. Wasabi should have a light theme for regulatory reasons. It was just an unfortunate compromise that the software has a dark theme. We built it on top of Dan Walmsley's AvalonStudio and the light theme didn't look good.

Sucks! But makes sense. Next iteration will be on a light theme.

Missing stuff: Link to PGP, Release Notes, Helps and Signatures. We are planning to roll out many different Linux binaries so the Linux icon must somehow multiply itself. In fact right now we have .deb and .tar.gz. Link to the onion website is also very important. Link to zkSNACKs company and API. Screenshot.

Yes, all of this stuff will be added in their dedicated sections below. And the company link, API and onion address will be in the footer.

The coinjoins; this is for me being able to check quickly if everything is right on mobile, but also it's good because people can see what's going on.

Right! Let's utilize the same as real-time proof. The section which will have the coinjoin illustration can have a sub-section with the title "recent coinjoin transactions" displaying tx links

The "most private wallet for bitcoin" feels a bit scammy for me. For example what if there'll be another wallet that competes with us? Will we take this down? Arguably JoinMarket is just as good as Wasabi in a different way (instant anonymity set gain transactions.) Maybe change it to -> "unfairly private"

Understand your perspective on the “most private wallet for bitcoin” and I admire you for being humble here, haha. IMO it is genuinely a true (and bold) claim. There is simply no competition (yet). Since JoinMarket is not a wallet, we can truly claim the throne here. Tomorrow, if some wallet comes up that could one-up Wasabi, we can change the language. At the same, I’ll leave it on you to decide...

We can collaborate on the textual content. I have been more focused on the design so far, so no worries there.

Next steps:

• Go light, not dark
• Complete the design mockup with all the different sections
• Add CoinJoin Illustrations
• Fix text
• Anything else that I missed?

[mayankchhabra]

Presenting the next design iteration of the website.

Changes:

• Light theme with lots of negative white-space
• 4 core features in a minimalist bar right under the hero section. They'll be links to their respective sites (coinjoins -> zerolink repo, tor -> torproject.org, coin-control -> @nopara73's medium article, open source -> wasabi repo)
• Added CoinJoin illustration along with recent txs
• Added screenshot on mac with download links to binaries, signatures, PGP and release notes
• Added an FAQ section
• Onion address, API, press kit, company and social media links live in the footer now

PS: Ignore textual content. It will be plugged into the coded website