It’s official. It’s November 1 today and the countdown to the testnet launch is on! You can practically feel the sparks flying off the SmartDec team as they work tirelessly developing the exchange. If you want to read the in-depth version of the work they’ve been carrying out, head over to the SmartDec blog here. If you want the highlights, as always, keep on reading.

SmartDec Is Working Hard on the User Experience

One of the biggest complaints we hear about exchanges is that they offer a poor user experience. At Digitex, we’re keenly aware that complicated processes, annoying error messages, and difficulty finding information can turn users away. This is why Adam has been so resolute on getting the UI/UX experience absolutely right.

And that requires a lot of work. Every time you add or take something away, other issues and ideas emerge, rather like playing a game of whack-a-mole. Over the last two weeks, the bulk of the SmartDec team’s attention has been on improving the user interface and trying to reach Adam’s high standards.

Among some of the key achievements since their last report is implementing a User History request. This allows traders to see the information about their trades on screen and even select certain periods of time. They will also be able to download this information in .csv format.

On top of that, the team has implemented requests that send information about users’ unmatched orders and positions. All user activity will be saved in a convenient table in the “My Profile” page and will even include details such as the time the user logged in and from what operating system. The Wallet page is also getting extra attention at the moment and, of course, the continual testing goes on.

Continued Testing and Bug Fixing

No wonder they’re called “bugs”! All the little issues and errors that emerge during adding new functionality are really annoying indeed. It’s not a problem for the capable development team, though. As we mentioned before, there are some 26 developers working on the Digitex exchange–and they’re constantly testing and fixing bugs.

Some of the main challenges that have resulted from stress testing (again, another aptly-named process) included the price updater giving an “Out of Memory” error message, partially-filled orders unable to be canceled, and canceling buy orders canceling sell orders as well. These have all been discovered and fixed and the team continues to scour for more and resolve as many issues as they can. Of course, we’re releasing a testnet at the end of the month, so we expect that some issues will still crop up. We’ll be very grateful for all user feedback.

Exploring Some Different Code

In the last SmartDec report, they mentioned that they were starting to build all the components of the exchange on Amazon Web Services. They have now completed this and are in the process of stress testing here as well. The team found that some of the legacy architecture from the previous development team was not able to handle sufficient traffic. That’s a problem as it limits the throughput dramatically and creates a bottleneck.

The team is currently working on a solution to this problem. You can read about this in more detail in the SmartDec report and in the following update.

Wrapping It Up

During the last two weeks, the bulk of SmartDec’s work has been on improving and adding to the User Interface. But they have continued to conduct regular stress testing of the system and integrating the new design with the back end. We’d like to thank them for their excellent work and can’t wait to start beginning closed testing very soon.