Try Quests to earn cryptoTerra - 145. Show Us Your Moves
Question 145: Let’s talk UX (user experience)! Document your experience as a user of Wormhole, compared to the Terra Shuttle. What do you find helpful? What features impede your experience? Do you have any recommendations to improve the user experience?
As the future of DeFi is cross-chain, it is time to check out some bridges to other ecosystems. In this analysis we will try out two bridge solutions, Terra Shuttle and Wormhole, examine and evaluate it for its user experience by transferring $UST from Terra to Binance Smart Chain.
Since it is about UI/UX, some assumptions are rather a personal opinion and not necessarily substantiated.
Date: 2022-02-16
What is Terra Shuttle?
Terra Shuttle, now known as Terra Bridge, is a bridge build by Terraform Labs for the Terra Ecosystem to transfer (native) tokens to other blockchains. Currently these cross-chain transfers work for Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Harmony and Osmosi.
Info: We'll call Terra Shuttle by its new name in this article: Terra Bridge
What is Wormhole?
Wormhole is also a cross-chain bridge, enabling interoperability between different blockchain networks, built on/for Solana Blockchain to act as a bi-directional bridge to other blockchains like Avalanche, Oasis, Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon and of course Terra.
Wormhole was recently in the news with its "Wormhole hack!" where it lost about $320 million in cryptocurrency funds after a novel vulnerability was exploited on February 2.
Wormhole was recently renamed to Portal Token Bridge and the whole application has undergone a redesign.
Info: We will continue to call Portal Token Bridge just Wormhole in this article, as it is shorter and easier ;-)
Conclusion
The UI/UX of Terra Bridge is super easy and slick, Wormhole is more detailed but the workflow is also more complicated, it always needs an extra 'click' for the user.
Another big difference is the fee-handling. With Terra all fees are paid on the Terra side, with Wormhole a part of the fees is paid on Terra and the other part (the costs for redeeming the asset) on the BSC side.
The last difference ist the asset we get on the target chain. Via Terra Bridge we get casual 'Wrapped' UST, with Wormhole we get a strange 'UST (Wormhole)'. I don't kn ow how both handle other assets, but Terra Bridge feels much better here with their $UST handling.
At the end, you guessed it already, I have to say that I really like Terra Bridge much more because of its simplicity. But I also have to say, that Wormhole may be the mightier application with more transfer options etc.
Note: Be careful with moving assets and also NFTs to other chains. Please check first what you can do with it on the other side.
Thanks for reading!
This analysis was created on 2022–02–16 for a bounty at Flipside Crypto by piper to answer the following questions:
Terra - 145. Show Us Your Moves: Let’s talk UX (user experience)! Document your experience as a user of Wormhole, compared to the Terra Shuttle. What do you find helpful? What features impede your experience? Do you have any recommendations to improve the user experience?
Sources: Terra Bridge, Wormhole and Portal Token Bridge.
*Twitter: *
Both applications look very simple and self-explanatory at first glance. For both, the respective origin blockchains are preselected. For the Terra Bridge, $LUNA is already selected as the asset to be transferred. This makes it a little easier in my eyes because you know what can be transferred here for example. With Wormhole, another 'click' is necessary here first. I selected 'Terra' as FROM chain and 'BSC' as TO chain on both.
In addition, it is immediately noticeable that Wormhole offers two other functions: NFT and Redeem. We will come back to both of them briefly at the end.
There is no big difference between those two popups. I would give here a plus to Terra Bridge as the asset list is more compact and shows more assets.
In Terra Bridge I enter the amount I'd like to transfer and chose my target address. With wormhole I could only enter the quantity, for entering the destination address you have to click on 'NEXT'.
The next screen on Terra Bridge shows us all taxes and fees for this transfer and the 'Confirm' button to start and finish the transfer. On wormhole we have to select the wallet address first, before the screen above shows up. This screen informs us about the fees 'on the other side' for redeeming the asset there and the option to proceed with 'NEXT'.
After clicking 'NEXT' the Wormhole App shows a summary and only now the button for the transfer. After clicking that a popup to 'CONFIRM' the transfer shows up.
After confirming both transfers Terra Bridge is showing that the transfer has finished and is 'Complete'. At Wormhole another dialog to read and click to 'REDEEM' the asset on the BSC chain is needed before Wormhole also shows the details of the succesfull transfer.
Generally the handling on Terra Bridge seems different to Wormhole. At Terra Bridged you pay all your fees on the Terra side. On Wormhole, you pay wormhole fees on Terra, and redeem fees on target network. Also here, Terra Bridge is handling it a lot more easier for the user than Wormhole. I‘m very sure there are reasons to handle it that way on Wormhole, but it is not clear for me in this moment.
Wormhole offers two more features for the users: NFTs and Redeem:
- NFTs - Herewith you have the possibility to transfer your beloved NFT to other blockchains.
- Redeem - Option to redeem your not yet redeemed tokens on the target blockchain. This makes only sense at Wormhole because of the different workflow.
Here, too, we can see a big difference between the two applications. When transferring $UST via Terra Bridge we get 'Wrapped UST' on the BSC side. With Wormhole we get a different token for our $UST, namely 'UST (Wormhole)'. 'UST (Wormhole)' sounds a bit strange :-(