Introduction
Judy Piper, an engineer at C Labs, welcomes everyone to the Celo Tech Talk series, an initiative by the Celo Foundation to educate the community about Celo technology. The sessions aim to make the content accessible and inclusive for anyone interested in learning about Celo technologies. Recordings of previous talks can be found on the Celo Foundation’s YouTube channel.
About Valora and its Mobile-First Approach
Judy introduces Connor, the application engineering lead at C Labs, to talk about Valora, Celo’s mobile-first full-stack solution. Connor shares his background and how he got involved in working on Celo. He highlights the desire for international impact, the potential of blockchain technology, and the importance of mobile accessibility.
The Components of the Celo Protocol
Connor explains the components of the Celo protocol, including the core contracts written in Solidity and the Celo blockchain based on Go Ethereum. He emphasizes the need for a user-friendly identity protocol to facilitate easy transactions without the need for copying and pasting long hexadecimal strings.
Designing for Usability: Valora’s Identity Protocol
Connor delves deeper into Valora’s identity protocol, which allows users to find and send money to others without sharing phone numbers directly. This protocol enhances the end-user experience and promotes usability.
Valora’s Features: Local Currencies and Escrow
Connor discusses the features of Valora, such as support for local currencies and the ability to escrow money. These features cater to users’ preferences and promote familiarity with local currencies for transactions.
Security and Decentralization in Valora
Connor highlights the security aspect of Valora, emphasizing the user’s custody of funds and the use of encryption for transaction signing. He also mentions the ultra-light sync feature that enables a more efficient mobile experience.
Developer-Friendly Tools and Libraries
Connor explains how developers can leverage Celo’s libraries to interact with the Celo protocol and build mobile applications using familiar programming languages. He mentions the benefits of component-based UI design, code reusability, and tooling for improved development productivity.
Challenges and Collaboration
Connor acknowledges the challenges faced during the development of Valora, such as device synchronization issues and mobile-specific constraints. However, he emphasizes the advantage of close collaboration between the application and protocol teams, allowing for quick bug fixes and improvements.
Conclusion
Judy concludes the talk by thanking Corey, the designer at C Labs, for his contribution to Valora’s user interface design. She highlights the importance of understanding user behaviors and requests, and how Valora aims to address them to provide a seamless user experience.