Tech Fleet’s “Dextools for Kadena” and Kadena Block Explorer V2

Tech Fleet
7 min readAug 24, 2022

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https://techfleet.org

Written by Morgan Denner, Tech Fleet CXO

We’re incubating our next web3 product: an open source Kadena Block Explorer and a “Dextools.io for Kadena”.

Background

The Kadena blockchain is as innovative as it is young. Those who have built dApps on Kadena thus far deal with the challenges of very little PACT documentation and a growing user base of Kadena blockchain users. We’re still a long ways off to see the amount of adoption that Ethereum or Polkadot have, and we’re well on our way with Kadena. As such, robust trading apps have not been built because they have not been needed yet. Kadena development’s exploding in 2022 with the introduction of Kadena NFT’s and DeFi. It’s time to give the Kadena community some more extensive trading and blockchain activity analytics.

If our mission is to introduce Kadena to the world and allow for mainstream adoption, we must have tools that provide more clarity and visibility into Kadena blockchain activity. We must give traders what they need to track the perfect entry and exit. Chains like Ethereum and Binance offer very robust analytics tools for Blockchain and Trading activity today, like Dextools. Kadena Blockchain Explorer, while providing crucial information on Kadena activity, doesn’t provide enough data in rich user experiences for the likes of traders or users who need to see more.

Enter Tech Fleet’s new product, the Kadena Block Explorer V2 (yet to be named, now referred to as “KBEV2”).This is the second web3 product, next to Kadet Wallet, that Tech Fleet Community Contributors are going to govern. The KBEV2 will be Tech Fleet’s answer to providing robust data needs in the Kadena community to pave the way for Kadena’s mainstream adoption.

The Vision

The vision for this dApp, much like Kadet, is to remove the barrier to entry, avoid making the user think hard, and give them everything they need to make an informed decision. Traders today can rely on “1 minute” charts and contract addresses off Dextools.io to avoid scams and make the best trading decisions while trading on Decentralized Exchanges. Kadena’s got the DEX’s, now we need to show users the data. This opens the doors for much more robust trading and activity and allows more adoption of our beloved Kadena apps like Kaddex. It allows for socialization for Kadena as projects. It will help gain more exposure to audiences wanting to invest and trade on Kadena blockchain.

Features

Don’t make the user think hard

We’re on the same theme as Kadet Wallet, building a user experience that’s honed for lay people and people who don’t have experience with crypto or trading today. Removing the barrier to entry requires a lot of work to make the experience as intuitive as possible. Tech Fleet Community DAO will make this a priority in everything we do. This app should be built for inexperienced and expert users alike.

What does “Easy Mode” look like? The team will build this vision over time based on information from user research about the problems new and experienced users face today while trading and analyzing on Kadena.

Universal search

Mature explorers like Ethereum Block Explorer allow users to type in one “phrase” or data attribute and get results. They could type in either a wallet or a transaction ID or even an Ethereum Domain to get results from the explorer. This kind of flexible experience allows users to think less while using the app and avoids confusion when the system can “guess” for the user at what they’re trying to do. This dapp should allow for very flexible searching across Kadena block transactions.

The app should have:

  1. Search for wallet address and see transaction results
  2. Search for different types of Kadena transactions: “Reserve”, “Buy”, etc.
  3. Search for request key and see transaction results
  4. Search for Kadena Token Domain and see transaction results
  5. Search for block # and see transaction results
Ethereum Block Explorer allows users to type in one of many types of attributes and get immediate results from that. This flexibility allows for a more successful UX.

Detailed block analytics

Everything is recorded on the blockchain, but not all of it is visible to the masses until it’s made searchable. Those without experience using blockchain won’t know how to look for transaction information or details. We’d like to make it as easy as possible to look “under the hood” at the Kadena blockchain and all the block activity happening. Matured pair explorers like the Ethereum and Binance Explorer show all levels of detail for block activity so users can decide what’s relevant to look at depending on their situation. Our app should provide the following related to block analytics.

The app should have:

  1. Full block history
  2. Full transaction history
  3. More transaction details like success or failure statuses, block data, gas data, contract functions, and function input data.
Homepage of the Ethereum Block Explorer showing latest transactions and latest blocks being mined
Transaction details for an Ethereum transaction that was mined on the blockchain.

Kadena NFT Explorer

All NFT transactions happen on the blockchain just like token transactions. Today there are tools like the ERC-721 Explorer that allow users to search across all ERC-721 protocol NFT.

This app should have features to search for Kadena NFT, the first-ever for any application on Kadena.

Finding that perfect entry and exit for your trades

With trading activity happening across a spectrum of centralized and decentralized exchanges, it’s near impossible to see pricing activity that’s accurate without looking at near real-time activity. Sites like Coingecko and Coinmarketcap show 15 minute charts, updating trade data every 15 minutes.

For the moonbois and day traders, that’s certainly not enough. They need to know exactly when to get in or get out to their liking and technical analyses. Tools like Dextools have advanced views of the trading data happening on DEX’s which is where the gap exists. DEX traders who rely on 1 minute charts need to see the latest activity across decentralized and centralized exchanges. Today looking at KittyKad price charts is enough to see price and gauge how a token is performing for the moment.

The more visibility and exposure we give to the masses about the trading activity happening across exchanges and pairs, the better the trading User Experience will be for the Kadena blockchain. This product should take Kadena trading analytics to the next level and provide things traders expect.

The app should have:

  1. Advanced and flexible views of trading charts with minute trading as well as 15m/30m/1d/ etc.
  2. Tools for technical analysis
  3. Real-time transaction history of the token trading across DEX’s
  4. Token contract, websites, and other “official” links related to the token
Picture of Dextools’s trading chart

Building trust and reliability scores for Kadena tokens

Just because a token has liquidity on a DEX doesn’t mean it’s real. So many people have fallen victim to “rug pulls” where someone lists a token on a DEX with liquidity, possibly posing as another token, only to take the money and remove liquidity shortly after, leaving those who bought with no money and worthless tokens. Traders and investors today do a lot of research and vetting into teams to try and prevent this. Apps like Dextools have a lot of tools to help people understand how trustworthy a token is They provide things like trust scores and community scores to show level of risk.

The app should have:

  1. Cumulative token “trust score” based on multiple criteria
  2. Community-driven trust score
  3. Contract details viewable by the community
  4. Alerts and warnings when interacting with contracts or pairs that have a low trust score
  5. API data for other projects to grab this information that originates from our app
A picture of DEXTools “Trust Score” for a token pair.

Kadena Token rankings

Everyone loves to see the rankings. Token rankings are a great way for projects to socialize and gain exposure across communities. They’re a tool for communities to see overall success for the day or week. While Kadena doesn’t have a lot of tokens released on the blockchain yet, this allows for mass growth of our blockchain and allows healthy competition among Kadena projects.

The app should have:

  1. Kadena token “Biggest Winners” per the last 24 hours
  2. Kadena token “Biggest Losers” per the last 24 hours
  3. “Hot Pairs” for Kadena tokens per the last 24 hours
Picture of Dextools’s token rankings

Advertising and socials for projects

Part of what made the Ethereum ecosystem boom was the exposure that Dextools.io provided into new projects and token performance. This app should help users research and learn about new tokens dropping on Kadena exchanges so that they can make their best judgement call about which tokens to invest or trade.

The app should have:

  1. Paid advertising options for Kadena projects
  2. Perks for members

Future features

In the future we’ll build out more trading experiences for users based on their desires and needs. Some of the things that come to mind to offer:

  1. A way to see the trading charts for a single token across multiple DEXs at once (Dextools “Multichart”)
  2. A way to trade tokens right in the interface while looking at pair explorers (Dextools “DEXTSwap” aggregator)
  3. Advanced tier features like price alerts and more

Next Steps

Unlike Kadet Wallet, Tech Fleet Community DAO is starting this one from ground 0. No previous Design work has been done for this yet. A new team of apprentices and leads will form in Tech Fleet under the structure of Agile Sprints to define a formal vision, explore problems with users, and design a new experience for Kadena trading and blockchain analytics.

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Tech Fleet
Tech Fleet

Written by Tech Fleet

A place where UX'ers, product managers, and developers earn their wings in Tech through community education and team expereince. https://techfleet.org