Apps relative to crypto are very recent.
We wanted to study those Apps to make an smart article about technical stacks & good practices.
What are the good things?
What are the bad things in those about?
What are the important points if you want to start to build a new App?
To study those questions we have decided to take the most trendy applications and to compare them on technical aspects :
This article is the third of the serie :
TLDR;
- There is native Apps and Apps developed using a cross plateform solutions.
- All Apps can provide a very rich User Experience and extends the system using App Extensions or interact with other Apps to improve the journey of a User.
- The applications are characterized by the number of interactions with the system and the possible interactions with other Apps.
- The packaging is really different depending on the technology of the application and this leads to resources not optimized and some security weaknesses.
App interactions
Interactions with other Apps
An app can interact with other Apps, but to do that the App must declare a list of Apps to interact with.
This list give the possibility to the App to ask to open the other Apps for specific actions.
| App | Number of apps | Social Apps | Mails Apps | Wallet Apps | Jailbreak Apps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 ZenGo: Crypto & Bitcoin Wallet |
6 apps | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
 Coinbase: Buy Bitcoin & Ether |
17 apps | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
 eToro Money |
1 app | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
 Binance: Buy Bitcoin & Crypto |
5 apps | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
 CoinMarketCap |
10 apps | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
 FTX (anciennement Blockfolio) |
10 apps | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
 Crypto.com - Buy Bitcoin, ETH |
5 apps | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
 MetaMask - Blockchain Wallet |
5 apps | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
- Yes, Mail Apps make sense to give the user a way to share things, and maybe optimize actions.
- Social Apps (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter), give the user a way to share content or to log.
- Wallet Apps can be interesting to interact with (or to know that a User has alternative)
- Cydia is a good idea to detect jailbroken devices and maybe limit the usage of the App.
Interactions with the system
Interactions with the system give your App a real sense for the Users and provide lots of way to interact with her.
| App | iCloud service | Universal links | Apple Pay | Wallet | Keychain group | Apple Sign In | NFC reader | web credentials |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coinbase: Buy Bitcoin & Ether |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| MetaMask - Blockchain Wallet |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Binance: Buy Bitcoin & Crypto |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| ZenGo: Crypto & Bitcoin Wallet |
✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| eToro Money |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| CoinMarketCap |
❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| FTX (anciennement Blockfolio) |
❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Crypto.com - Buy Bitcoin, ETH |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
- Universal links, most of those Apps declare universal links (the fact to redirect the User inside the App if we navigate to an url of the website)
- Apple Pay, the App can do payment or transferts using ApplePay (it’s always better than having to give a Credit Card)
- Wallet, only Coinbase has developped a Coinbase Card integrated to Wallet
- Keychain group, a powerfull technology to store safely the data and share this with your other Apps & extensions.
- Apple Sign In, the Apple authentication process, only implemented by 50% of those Apps.
- NFC Reader, interesting features linked to NFC scanning and probably some partners integration to the Apps.
- Web Credentials, surprisly not the most implemented feature but very important to be able to share the User credentials with the web brower.
Integrations inside the system
The App extensions are external components to increase the App visibility on the system.
| App | Widget (old) | Widget(s) | Siri | ReplayKit | Notification service |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Binance: Buy Bitcoin & Crypto |
✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| CoinMarketCap |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Coinbase: Buy Bitcoin & Ether |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| FTX (anciennement Blockfolio) |
❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Crypto.com - Buy Bitcoin, ETH |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| MetaMask - Blockchain Wallet |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| ZenGo: Crypto & Bitcoin Wallet |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| eToro Money |
❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
- OLD Widget, Binance is the only one to provivide this old version of the Widget for the lower iOS versions 👏.
- new Widget, new SwiftUI widget. Cool to present some synthetic information withtout starting the App.
- Siri, “hello Siri i want to do something”. You can talk to your device and present actions.
- Notification Service, a service to improve the presentation of the content of the notifications for the user.
- ReplayKit, interesting service (use only by Binance), probably to record/save some actions on device and your face for security reasons.