TLDR; We built an entirely new UI and UX for NiceNode, an updated identity and a fresh website. Also, we ran into issues with Docker and are evaluating a replacement.

What we accomplished in the last 9 months

After the initial launch of NiceNode v1, we’ve received many positive comments from members of the community who want to participate on further decentralising the Ethereum network by just running a node. Our goal is to make this process as smooth as possible by eliminating as much of technicalities as we can. We’ve followed up by making NiceNode translatable with the help of our community in any language so a broader audience can be reached.

While we felt we’ve got something going there we also realized that the design was a bit lacking and could be improved upon. Meanwhile the merge happened and changed the way nodes are set up so we ended up going back to the drawing board to come up with the best possible solution for this.

Design

Together with some community members we’ve iterated quite a bit on how the application should work and feel. Since the node space is evolving quickly, we needed an interface that would allow us to manage nodes from different protocols easily while allowing us to add new features along the way. So, we’ve created a design system that allows us to do so.

New onboarding experience

While setting up a node in NiceNode v1 still required a bit knowledge we shifted to a more step-by-step approach that guides the user through some essential settings/options before actually starting the node. This way, we have a little more room to inform the user about the impact of their choices and can check if their hardware meets the requirements for the selected nodes they want to run. An easy way to minimize troubleshooting later on.

Development of v2

We’re currently hard at work to implement these changes for our v2 release which is quite an amount of work.

Docker Desktop issues

NiceNode v1 relied on a tool called Docker Desktop, an external tool that needed to be installed for it to be able to run the node software developed by the ethereum client teams. We’ve concluded that we had to drop Docker Desktop as a third-party installation, which was a mandatory thing for NiceNode to work. Overall it was just a confusing experience for users who are not familiar with the concept of containers. Also, Docker Desktop is not open-source, which means forking the code or accepting any code changes from the community is not possible. On top of that, it is in the process of being monetized and Docker could change its license and pricing overnight, leaving our users in trouble. Both of these are risks for NiceNode to depend on.

Hello Podman

Podman is an alternative to Docker - and it is Free & Open Source (with an Apache 2.0 license). It can be installed in the background and doesn’t open a second window like Docker Desktop does. There will be a future blog post which will share more technical details about Podman.

This is currently our biggest challenge but are quite confident that it’s worth the effort! If you have experience with OS, or specifically Linux, virtualization on macOS or Windows and would like to help, please reach out to us on Discord or Twitter!

A bit of rebranding

Together with reviewing the interface and application flows we’ve also come up wit a new logo/app icon and website. We used to rely on the amazing artwork by William Tempest provided on ethereum.org but decided it would be a good idea to have a little branding of our own.

Meet “Nick”

A simplified but recognizable icon inspired by William’s artwork we previously borrowed. Nick is an unbothered, moisturized and happy little node. Something we want you all to feel like while while using the app.

New website

While silently preparing for the relaunch, we also made a new website highlighting some core features, estimated requirements and FAQ’s for new visitors to check out.

Visit us at www.nicenode.xyz

Special thanks to the incredible work by Cornpotage and Danneh - two core NiceNode contributors!

There’s more!

Devcon

Johns gave a talk at Devcon Bogota about why and how to run a node. Check it out!

Donations

Throughout this time, we have received donations from ~1450 individuals on Gitcoin (and on Gitcoin’s new alpha round), a grant from CityDAO, a grant from the Ethereum Foundation ESP (Ecosystem Support Program), and strong encouragement from the community. Thank you 🙏

So when can we expect NiceNode v2?

We are targeting an alpha release by the end of March.

Before then, the full evaluation of Podman must be completed. Then it can be integrated into NiceNode by being installed and configured for the user behind the scenes which should result in a much better experience.

While we're currently focussing on getting this alpha release out of the door as soon as possible there's still work to be done to fully implement the new UI, which will get more of our attention from the alpha throughout the beta release.

On that note we're always looking for people experienced with front-end development, react, electron, nodejs, containers, or general scripting and start contributing with us! If you’re interested in helping out, hit us up on Discord.

And after that?

First and foremost we want a build that works as intended and we’ll keep on polishing after the alpha release until everything runs smoothly on Windows, MacOS & Linux. Your feedback and testing will be very valuable.

After we have a stable v2 release we have a ton of things on the wishlist we’d like to add! You’ve been suggesting awesome features on Discord and we can assure you they are noted! Thank you, keep ‘em coming. Perhaps, somewhere after v2 we can talk/poll about additional features for future releases.

Also we’ll be posting a more technical deep dive of Docker, Podman, and Linux virtualization on MacOS & Windows soon, so be sure the subscribe to this blog to keep you in the loop.

Thank you all for the continued support! We can’t wait to let you try what we’ve been working on for the last months! Stay tuned!