Blockfolio 2.0 Takes Crypto App Usability To New Level
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It’s been a big week for Blockfolio, the most popular cryptocurrency portfolio tracker in the world. First they announced their Series A funding – an $11.5M VC boost led by Pantera Capital. Now they’re unveiling their completely reworked crypto app, and demonstrating that their ambitions lie beyond mere money-tracking.
The new app, version 2.0, is being rolled out now to millions of Android and iOS users, and as well as a modernized look, what’s under the hood is almost all new.
“Our first app was programmed in a dorm room, literally an actual dorm room,” explained Ed Moncada, CEO of Blockfolio, in a discussion with Crypto Briefing. “And since then, we’ve obviously come a long way in terms of users and features. So the new version is a complete overhaul from the ground up, with a focus on usability.”
New features in version 2.0 include several that Moncada says users demanded – including multiple portfolios, global average prices, and the ability to deduct exchange fees.
Moncada says that although there are new features, it’s the user experience that really excites him as the project goes forward. “It’s sleek. That’s what we were going for. More intuitive than anything on the market, in our opinion. We feel that we should be making crypto easier, not harder, so we’ve always tried to make Blockfolio something that would be easy to use and innovative.”
The drive for innovation is one of the things that has kept the Blockfolio team on track, even as they went on a hiring spree to ramp up development of the new product.
“We’re extremely proud of our industry firsts,” says Moncada. “We were the first to add all the cryptos… first to add all the exchanges… we came out with Blockfolio Signal and brought that product to market first too. And yeah, we see people duplicating our work, but we take that as a compliment. We like being thought of as forward-thinking.”
But product innovation is one thing – a revolutionary business model is another. Last year, Moncada and his team ran three ads on Blockfolio. “We were being pushed all the time, offered so much money just to run these ICO ads, but we didn’t want to pollute our platform. We tried these three, and then we just said no – it’s not worth it, trying to figure out if they’re legit or not so we can protect our audience. So we just said no to that type of advertising. Which was hard, because we were leaving $2M a month on the table. But the business is better for it, and the funding round, with investors like Pantera, Bitmex, Huobi, Pathfinder, Refactor, all of them… that proves we made the right decision.”
Test Driving Blockfolio 2.0
The beta app proves that the team has been working hard on the interface. Everything has been made cleaner, more efficient, and easier to read than the app’s predecessors, from the font choice to the shades used for candlesticks. (Night mode on many apps fails to take into account that red and green can scream almost as loud as white, while the new app has a gentler approach. Perhaps appropriate for a less volatile market).
And from a usability perspective, improvements like swiping between portfolios, accessing global averages, and changing exchange pairs with ease all stand out. Even alerts can be accessed with one touch from the main portfolio page.
Blockfolio may be at a crossroads. It’s hard to find a feature in its competitors that it can’t match or better. So if it has the crypto tracking functionality down, where does it go from here?
Its recent funding round suggests that investors see potential in its Signal feature – a direct hotline from crypto projects to their users – and their excitement about the new product line may indicate that Blockfolio will need to look beyond incremental gains for future growth.
“We do have plans for more product extensions, and we’ll be working on the most seamless exchange and wallet integration in the industry,” confides Moncada. “This is why we are working with exchange investment partners – we’re going to go after it from the top down, working closely with them to deliver on the experience.”
If the usability is anything like the current incarnation of the flagship app, that could be a major step in the right direction for Blockfolio – and crypto adoption as a whole.
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