Be careful when registering names — you may lose your coins with Superhero Wallet

mxvy · March 15, 2021, 12:11pm

After installing Superhero Wallet app, I clicked on the “Register a Name” link, which was in the center of the app screen, then went to the “Register” tab and entered a name, thinking to associate the name with the account. I did it as a whole for fun, since I have not yet understood the practical meaning of this. I confirmed the transaction with a total fee of about 0.000016AE and then I saw -352AE on my balance, which was 66$ at the time. No notification was shown from the app confirming the payment of the 352AE fee.

As far as I understand, after reading the documentation and discussing this issue in chats, the creators of Superhero Wallet did not bother with a user-friendly interface. Whether it is intentional or not is up to you, but I was offended when faced with such an attitude.

In chats, no one can explain the benefits of owning this name other than posting it on Twitter or the convenience of sending coins within the network. Otherwise, they throw a link to the documentation where the protocol is described in technical language with an implicit fee indication (protocol/AENS.md at master · aeternity/protocol · GitHub fees and protection time).

With all this, I have not yet received this name. I placed my first bid in an auction. This bid cannot be canceled. When I receive this name, it looks like a temporary lease of a domain on the Internet. But I could not figure out what lease period even from the documentation.

I cannot cancel my bid, but someone can bid higher than my bid on this name. Therefore, I suggest that the creators of Superhero Wallet do it — The bidding record of vy.chain - AENS - AEKnow.
Let’s see what will come of it and from which side the creators of the wallet will prove themselves.

Further, a video screen and a screenshot, in addition to my words:

marco.chain · March 15, 2021, 1:03pm

I can absolutely understand your frustration. the UX definitely needs to be improved here. but in the end it was your fault. maybe someone outbids you so that you will get your bidding fee back. when I remember right in the past Superhero only allowed names with a length > 12 so that you immediately got the name. but in this case you also had to pay the nameFee. so at least there is a hope for you that somebody outbids you. otherwise your nameFee is gone and you will be owner of the name when the auction ends.

the lease period currently is ~ 3 months (50000 blocks). this will be changed with the upcoming Iris hardfork and set to ~ 1 year.

mxvy · March 15, 2021, 3:41pm

If you want to say that by clicking the confirm button, I took the blame for the decision myself, then you are right.

If this situation were considered by the court, then the truth would obviously be on my side, because:

Near to value Name fee, the currency is not indicated. In exactly the same way it could be bitcoins or aetos or just information like Name id or Name salt.
And most importantly, there is an indication of the total fee without specifying what it refers to, which means it refers to this operation. And here the currency is indicated.
And another, application could ask for confirmation of payment for a total of 352AE.

As you rightly noted, in this case, UI is bad and misleading — this is usually used by scammers.
For this reason, I turn to the creators of Superhero Wallet with a request:

Take into account my situation and quickly make changes in the application.
And compensate for the damage by placing a bet on this name above.

Of course, the decision will remain with the creators, but this moment will be a clue in the life of the application, showing the attitude of the creators to the community.

In my opinion, this is a very large amount for this service on the blockchain, the advantage of which is cheap and fast transactions.
Calculate how much this name will cost when AE=10$, and when 100$. And also with a limited period.

The question arises: who set these prices and what were they based on?

marco.chain · March 15, 2021, 8:13pm

this was initially set and the fee only needs to be paid once. if you always update / extend your name in time you will only pay the tx fee for updating the name (pennies). if you forget to extend the name will be revoked and can be claimed again by others.

feel free to make suggestions how to improve the auction mechanism. for sure this could be optimized. right now it is like it is.

mxvy · March 16, 2021, 7:24am

My suggestion to improve the auction mechanism:

Add a bet cancellation.
Significantly reduce the cost of first bid.
Make a user-friendly interface.

The problem is not in the auction, but in the approach to the user.

Because of this attitude, many users lose coins: someone has losses during transactions with the exchange, someone has losses during 51 attacks, and I have a loss from an ill-conceived interface and I think I’m not alone.

According to my observations, the creators and the community are not up to such people, their problems are not interesting, so people leave.

In my situation, no one has helped me yet, except they gave me a link to the documentation, which is written in a complex technical language, where without a calculator and special knowledge you will not understand what the fee for registration a name is.

Most importantly, several users and you recognized the UI/UX proble, but none of the creators tried to resolve this situation, so that I would be satisfied.

And you did not answer who came up with such a calculation and how such a large commission is justified. In my opinion, this value does not correspond to reality, and the implementation is made in such a way as to mislead users - this is usually an approach used by scammers.

I would like to believe that the creators of Superhero Wallet did not intend to allow such a situation. But as a programmer and interface designer, I understand that these are gross mistakes leading to loss of value.

I will have to contact Apple support where I downloaded the Superhero Wallet application with my testimony in order for them to judge this case.

Thank you very much for your communication with me.

Maybe you can tell me how can I start a community vote to revise the name registration fee pricing?

erik.chain · March 16, 2021, 1:09pm

Hi @mxvy, we are happy to receive your user feedback and I think it is very valuable. If you want to start a community poll about changing the AENS claim fee structure, feel free to do so here with your Superhero wallet: https://superhero.com/voting
(Though it would be a good if you explain your poll in a separate forum thread, to explain your alternative fee structure for example).

Here is an example how a claim fee for 10 characters is calculated:

You can also see all details about .chain names and their expiration time on aenalytics.org

Btw expiration time is a parameter that has already been subject to change through a community poll, if the upcoming Iris hardfork will be implemented .chain names will expire after 12 months and not after 100 days anymore: AENS Name expiration time - Time to make a vote

@bruteforce.chain @maxkpower Please review this UI feedback for name auctions, to show how much the auction costs in a user’s preferred fiat currency and to make the name fee more visible at the top together with the tx fee and so the “total” will be really the total of the tx fee and the name fee.

mxvy · March 16, 2021, 1:39pm

Thank u.

First, I would like to understand where these numbers come from: 75025, 10, 14

Why not: 5025, 1, 1.4 ?

I think this is a good decision, but so far it has not even been taken.

And place your bid higher than my bid on that name (https://www.aeknow.org/aens/viewbids/vy.chain). I want to give back my coins that I misused due to this UI.

erik.chain · March 16, 2021, 2:01pm

@hanssv.chain maybe you could help to shed some light on where these initial numbers for the name fee calculation come from?

hanssv.chain · March 16, 2021, 2:09pm

I don’t recall the discussion regarding the actual numbers (well 10^14 is the smallest denominator that fits all the other fees so 10 and 14 I can explain ) - I was busy solving the technical implementation of the auctions, the numbers came from above I guess…

The full table is here: protocol/AENS.md at master · aeternity/protocol · GitHub

marco.chain · March 16, 2021, 2:32pm

unfortunately we are currently still relying on the old (and buggy) middleware here. but we are actively working on a relaunch which uses the new middleware. as long this isn’t the case I would recommend to use other explorers like https://www.aeknow.org/

just to let you know. I hope we will be able to release the new version in the near future.

ae-omar · March 16, 2021, 6:42pm

Hi @mxvy I read and followed all your comments, you have your point but I cannot share at least one part of the solution you propose for your issue.

The biggest challenge we face in blockchain field in general is to make everything we do easy to understand and use. Many times we rely for the first part on the fact that this is transparent, don’t trust in anybody’s word and verify yourself meaning that you can go and check the source code and see how the calculation was done. That may work for developers but of course, it doesn’t work for regular or non- technical users. Yes the UX you mentioned isn’t clear, I could explain why it’s that way but I’ll only feed the fact that is for technical users

What we will do now that you have your feedback is to note and prioritize and get this done as soon as possible but take in consideration that there is always more urgent things so we (and you can also) push for this get it’s place.

The only thing I ask is that we don’t get confused or confuse other just because we want to get more attention to our problem, that’s not fair and at the end doesn’t help you. We are working hard to things better, faster and market it. We will make mistakes on the way, but nobody by any means has any interest on scams, on the contrary we are all the time pushing them away.

Please stay with us and help us to shape what we are building. Thanks for your contribution.

mxvy · March 17, 2021, 7:09am

Maybe someone from above can shed some light on these numbers?

What is the reason for your table depth of 31 characters? Why not start with 25 characters? This, you can lower the price for Naming. You can also decrease the first factor (75025) in your function.

Question: why is the Aeternity blockchain being created?
Hopefully this is the wrong answer: collect more money from the community?

I wish the Aeternity team the best of luck for the fourth year now. With ICO, I am with them, but the result during this time is described a little higher. Why?

I myself am a programmer and I understand how difficult it is to explain technical details to a layman.

But someone could: Ford, Apple, SpaceX … You can do it when you stop thinking that this is impossible.
If you are familiar with OpenSea, then you know how easy it is to use it. The project was launched later by Aeternity, and the essence is similar to Naming. Compare their auction interfaces.
And many more examples can be cited.

I think it’s worth looking for opportunities, not reasons.

As a reminder, my first complaint is about the Superhero Wallet — app for everyone, not just tech users.

I think this should be done as quickly as possible so that no one else gets unwanted payments.

I completely agree with you and that is why I created this topic here.

I believe in the Aeternity and Superhero Wallet team. I believe that you will be able to resolve this situation, so that I would be satisfied (above, I described specific steps for this.).

Thank you for your actions!

Please help me stay with you.