DashPay to be built on native mobile

Dash Community,

We wanted to share with you a technical change in how we are executing against the product strategy for our Evolution wallets.

After some internal deliberation, we believe that we will be able to deliver the best possible version of DashPay by building it into the existing native mobile wallets on Android and iOS, as opposed to building a brand new app in React Native.

For those unfamiliar with our Evolution plans, we are working on the following:

• Blockchain Usernames (DashCore v1.0), allowing any user on the Dash network to register a username, which will serve as their decentralized identity across multiple applications
• Decentralized API and App Storage (Dash Platform), providing developers the ability to securely connect to the Dash network, build applications, and store application data
• User-Friendly Payments App (DashPay), providing users with the ability to register their username, create lists of contacts, and easily pay their friends and family

We had initially pursued building a new app for DashPay in React Native for several reasons. First, the React Native framework is known for allowing rapid mobile development on both iOS and Android in Javascript. Javascript is both a popular programming language in the development community as well as the language of Dash Platform. React Native also allows for multi-platform app development as opposed to requiring custom development for iOS and Android.

We believed building DashPay in React Native would allow us to deliver a unified user experience on DashPay and a solid reference app to developers as rapidly as possible. Our plan was to create DashPay with a focus on the inexperienced user who is not as familiar with Dash or with crypto in general and keep the existing native wallets focused on the more experienced user. Both would be Evolution-enabled so users could easily exchange payments via usernames.

When we made the decision, we did so with a commitment to revisit it if our assumptions about development speed on our native wallets and React Native were incorrect. As development progressed, the native wallets advanced more rapidly than we initially assumed relative to React Native. As a result, we decided to get back together and discuss whether the React Native approach still made sense, as we had committed to do.

We considered the following priorities for DashPay to make the decision:

• Highest quality UI/UX
• Proven level of security
• Existing native functionality (Uphold and Firebase integrations)
• Ability to align as closely as possible with Dash Platform team’s launch
• Architectural flexibility for future features
• Probability of success

After evaluating the various possible approaches against these criteria, the conclusion was to focus our resources to build DashPay on native iOS and Android. We believe this approach minimizes time to market, reduces development cost, and allows us to include all the features, UI/UX, security, and flexibility we aim to provide to DashPay users of all experience levels. As an additional benefit, the native mobile wallets already have a substantial and growing user base, and now those users will get to experience the beauty and simplicity of the planned DashPay designs.

We will still keep the Javascript wallet library up to date (along with the previously planned Objective-C, Java, .NET, and PHP libraries) so developers from a range of disciplines can build applications leveraging Evolution features. In addition, the originally planned UI redesign to align the UX of the native mobile wallets is still slated for release this fall in advance of the launch of DashPay for Evolution.

We know everyone is as excited as we are about the coming enhancements to the native mobile wallets. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.