My thoughts on Shapeshift's Prism Exchange
What is Prism?
The world's first trustless asset portfolio platform, enabling users to create portfolios of digital assets, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Monero, & Golem without counterparty risk. In a matter of minutes, an investor can create their crypto portfolio, gain exposure to a wide range of blockchain tokens, and secure their investment without having to maintain unique wallets for each asset.
Its still in Beta at this point, so im not going to leak screenshots etc.. i'll give my early impressions.
Before this project came along, I never found Ethereum useful.
- Smart contracts... ok
- DAOs... ok
- ERC20 tokens... meh
Now i see what all the fuss is about; smart contracts, etc. Shapeshift handled it in a nice way. #random
Issues
The login screen, Civic (self sovereign identity) at the time of writing doesn't work outside the USA so... i have to login with a normal username & password.
Nitpick: after entering my username and password i cannot press the Enter button on my keyboard to go to the next page. I have to move my cursor to the login button -_-"
Its a small issue but i don't like it... #dealwithitSettings
There are none/ maybe it's disabled. But its strange, coming back to this...
How it Works
- You add the assets you want in your portfolio (Dash, BTC, LTC, XRP, etc.). It's a similar selection to what's presently available on www.shapeshift.io
- Create the portfolio as a Smart Contract (Prism).
- Deposit ETH to the Smart Contract address via Exodus or MyEtherwallet i used Jaxx since its a better wallet than Exodus -_- (more on that later).
- After you've deposited the funds, the Prism gets created and i would assume you should start getting paid every so often from the smart contract. Didn't work for me so i'll check once its out of beta.
Issues cont'd - History/ Prisms you have created
Non-existent, and this is my main issue with Prism in it's beta.
I created a test Prism, not the one pictured below... a day later the Prism can't be found by Prism name or the creator, there is no way to see MY contracts. Maybe.. it's disabled in beta?! I dont know why that would even be a thing, doesn't make sense.
Where's my money?
SO, I can't find my $30 Prism Portfolio... the smart contract should be viewable on the ETH blockchain. But i don't know where to find that info. Its not listed on the website, I can't view the Smart Contract on Etherscan (unless i'm doing something wrong >_<)..... but again why isn't this information available under my profile?!?!
I sent a message to the Helpdesk a couple days ago -_- and i'm confident they'll reply. (their cust service isn't "bad", just slow to reply)
The cryptosphere definitely needs more customer service people... developers, engineers, analysts are great but without half decent customer support mass adoption can't happen.
Slack & Reddit don't cut it in my opinion. >_> shapeshift hire more people.