New Arké version is up on TestFlight, with a roughly estimated 1,000,000,000 improvements to the Send flow. Goal is that you can throw all your bitcoin/ark addresses, lightning invoices/offers/addresses, BIP-21s and BIP-353 in all kinds of combinations at it, and it will try to make sense of it all and present whatever comes out on the other end in a simple way. Quite intricate. It's a good iteration, with some more to come. Definitely feels like the most intricate part of the app.

"Beyond the GUI: It's Time for a Conversational User Interface" from 2013.

WIRED

Beyond the GUI: It's Time for a Conversational User Interface

The GUI has served us well for a long time, but it's beginning to fray around the edges. We’re now grappling with an unintended side effect of ub...

"Why conversational design is the future" from 2016. https://medium.com/intercom-inside/why-conversational-design-is-the-future-2c05f65aa68e Will AI make it happen this time?

Chuck Norris’s public key was his private key. Nobody dared to use it. RIP

Arké looks, feels, and works differently than other wallets. Wouldn't be much of a contribution to the ecosystem if it was like all the other ones. Some experiments will work and some will fail. But if we want more people to use this stuff, we need to try things.

Some interesting research by Anthropic on what people want from AI, and whether they are getting it.

What 81,000 people want from AI

Last December, tens of thousands of Claude users around the world had a conversation with our AI interviewer to share how they use AI, what they dr...

Considering writing an Arké case study for the Bitcoin Design Guide. Here's a first issue to invite conversation.

GitHub

Arké case study · Issue #1220 · BitcoinDesign/Guide

One of the goals of the Arké iOS wallet project is to implement the best practices in the Bitcoin Design Guide. This is also part of the Reference...

First Arké push notification ever! The text obviously needs work, but very cool that it works now (this was an intimidating piece of code for me to work on). The bark mailbox system makes this very convenient to implement (those Second people seem to know what they are doing). Privacy-wise, this requires a relay to connect the app, Ark server and Apple push notification servers. The relay can connect your device ID, mailbox ID, and incoming Ark payment VTXOs. Don't like it, don't turn on notifications. I'll have to see how I can only store the least amount of data possible, since I really don't care to know what people do. The only interesting thing to know maybe would be a simple counter that tracks how many payments were made. That would at least give some broad insight into activity.

From yesterdays Plan B Masterclass, one of the key ideas about user experience. At the start, no-one knows about your product. Then they hear about it and an initial idea forms. Maybe they get interested and learn a little more. If it sounds good, they give it a try, etc. You can imagine a person at each of these steps. Who are they, what do they know at this point, and what is the most useful information for them? You an apply this at a product level or a feature level, and for different types of users, and is a really useful mental framework. Also covered in the Bitcoin Design Guide:

Bitcoin Design

Usage life cycle

A framework for how users learn about bitcoin and gain expertise with bitcoin applications.

Feels like we need a lot more use cases for bitcoin. Like paying for groceries, paying for gas, paying for rent, paying for clothes, paying for concert tickets... or receiving that payment on the other side.

"The fractures fell neatly along disciplines: engineers using AI to wish away designers, designers wishing away engineers, product managers wishing away both. In this climate, AI becomes frenemy identification technology, another way to avoid working together. It’s always easier to grab a tool and bypass the mess of coordination, even if that means doing more and doing it alone. AI lowers the barrier to working outside your lane, and sure, that could mean more overlap between disciplines, but right now, we’re mostly boxing each other out or stepping on one another’s toes."

Frank Chimero · Beyond the Machine

Personal site of designer Frank Chimero

Yes? No? Maybe?

The Sovereign Tech Fund has fellowships for work on open source and open standards.

Sovereign Tech Agency

Why Shaping Open Standards Matters | Sovereign Tech Agency

Sovereign Tech Agency

Sovereign Tech Fellowship | Sovereign Tech Agency

I am no longer an AI-em-dash (—) apologist. If I create a text with AI, I leave them in. Whether the text is worth reading is not a matter of em-dash use, it's a matter of the text being interesting and relevant.

"Thinking of AI as an instrument recenters the focus on practice. Instruments require a performance that relies on technique—the horn makes the sound, but how and what you blow into it matters; the drum machine keeps time and plays the samples, but what you sample and how you swing on top of it becomes your signature. In other words, instruments can surprise you with what they offer, but they are not automatic. In the end, they require a touch. You use a tool, but you play an instrument. It’s a more expansive way of doing, and the doing of it all is important, because that’s where you develop the instincts for excellence. There is no purpose to better machines if they do not also produce better humans."

Frank Chimero · Beyond the Machine

Personal site of designer Frank Chimero

Ordinals are very much a "bicycle bear" (https://frankchimero.com/blog/2015/the-webs-grain/).

Arké now has a roadmap page, with lots of em dashes, proudly wearing its AI imprint. Might still change, but it's a good start.

Roadmap

Where Arké is, and is going.

No good reasons anymore for apps to not be localized or have solid accessibility. AI can bust this out super fast.

Arké now has a custom BDK-based onchain wallet to complement the Ark functionality. Onchain transactions now blend in seamlessly with Ark and Lightning.

The latest recovery phrase UI for Arké. You scratch off the surface to reveal the words. And there's a PDF to print and copy it onto that matches the two-column layout on the screen. Fold it twice, and put it in an envelope and tuck it away somewhere safe. Many won't print, but it might still be informative.

Feedback on Arké from TestFlight peeps is coming in and there's a lot to fix and improve. Nothing major luckily, but a ton of refinement. So far, so good.

Polishing a wallet UI is a ton of work. Was fixing a lot of details in the Arké send flow today around resolving BIP-353 addresses and showing the resolved address appropriately. With various input methods like manual, paste, scan, BIP-21 click, and contacts, it gets quite intricate quickly. And then add all the different address types on top of that. All just so users don't have to care and it "just works".