Nova Devnet results
Since the first few weeks of January, the Nova Devnet version has been gradually rolled out to the 2237 community members who applied to take part in our testing phase! In this article, we share a resume of all results & feedback.
During the last 4 weeks, we’ve been collecting a range of performance and analytical data and gathering feedback and submissions about the product. Devnet testers also had the opportunity to participate in user session calls where they spoke with our product team and explored the product together. We had just over 50 community members dedicate around an hour of their time to the process with us.
The rest of the article summarizes the findings of our testing. It also talks about some of the changes and improvements that will take place before the launch of the Nova Mainnet!
Overview on Findings
After compiling all the information and feedback collected, we summarized this information using an impact/reach chart which helps prioritize and understand the severity of the pain points discovered.
Impact: High Impact means that the pain point was seriously limiting or preventing a user from reaching their intended goal in the product. In the case of Nova, generally, the user was building a portfolio or joining one created by the community.
Reach: How many people experienced this pain point. More common moves further up the chart.
The good news is that the majority of pain points existed in the green and orange impact bands and that the majority of high-impact issues are bugs that have already been removed or are in the process of being removed thanks to the reporting features we placed within the app.
The general theme of the feedback is around the understanding. It's important that going forward we show the right levels of information, make that information clear to understand, and give the user as frictionless a journey as possible to complete their goals within the product.
Main Notes:
Deposit process
Quite a few reported that the deposit process for creating or joining a portfolio was slow. This was a good observation and one that we were aware of but we didn’t do enough to communicate this within the testing phase.
Devnet was a great opportunity to stress test the on-chain creation and deposit process. The average portfolio deposit process requires around 17 steps as we convert the portfolio to the correct assets, assign them to trading strategies, and deposit assets into yield strategies. We also utilize a state machine to save the progress of the process so that a user can resume the deposit if an error is discovered so it’s quite a complex process.
Fortunately, the testing carried out by our community helped iron out some of the bugs and reliability challenges we had. Interestingly, most people didn’t mind the long process we had put in place for Devnet but wanted more communication on what was happening. Ironically, we had included a progress list but on some devices, the screen size meant that this information wasn’t visible on the page without scrolling down so many people had missed it!
On Mainnet, all of this will be fixed. The number of approvals the user will have to do will be significantly reduced and more information will be provided on the steps and their progress.
Explore Page
The first page users come across within the web app is the explore page. This presents a list of all the portfolios created in the platform, we had just under 400 created in total across the Devnet period.
But this quantity was overwhelming for quite a few users and we had limited categorization, search, and filtering tools to help people understand and navigate the range of portfolios.
Going forward, we’re introducing more fixed information that portfolio creators can use to describe their portfolios, mainly in the form of tags and numbers. This kind of standardized info, alongside more factual data about what the portfolio is and the type of assets it contains, allows us to add search filters for regular users. For example, if a portfolio is made up of stablecoins and large-cap cryptocurrencies with risk aversion trading strategies, it could qualify to be categorized as “reduced-risk”.
While the direction is clear, we still have lots of ideas to explore and get right with this area. Keep an eye out in the community for some polls and feedback opportunities!
Improved Dashboard
Within Nova, the dashboard is where you can keep track of the portfolios you participate in and manage your funds within the protocol. A few felt that this section wasn’t providing them with enough insight into the status and progress of their portfolios and that they would struggle to make informed decisions about their portfolio such as adding more or closing it.
We’re working on a dashboard overhaul that will provide greater detail about assets and more visual aids such as price graphs and bar charts to help users understand their portfolios in even deeper detail!
More trading strategies & assets are available
Operating on Devnet means that we have to set up and simulate all the aspects of the real Mainnet environment as much as possible. That means dummy tokens, liquidity pools, and yield vaults amongst other aspects.
At Mainnet, a wide range of SPL-based tokens will be accessible on Nova and can be used within portfolios. We also had a great reception to trading strategies but also lots of requests to see more in action. Mainnet will also bring more trading strategies as talked about in this article here
Closing Notes
A huge thank you to all of the testers and feedback providers, it’s been great to connect with you all more and discover how we can improve the Nova product even further.
We’re now in build mode for the next few weeks while we implement changes and final preparations for Mainnet. Join our discord to keep up to date!
Public Devnet will remain open for the next few weeks but this version won’t be maintained.
A few community member calls had to be rescheduled. We will be in touch with them about carrying out some testing sessions once implementation has been completed from Devnet.
About Nova Finance
Nova is a programmable asset framework that allows people to access Defi without having to learn complex financial management skills. Users can create a portfolio of assets within the product that auto-generate returns through yield strategies while auto-executing on investment strategies such as dollar-cost averaging, take-profit calls, and much more.
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