Maximizing Stellar Wallet Performance: Best Tips & Tricks

Developing decentralized applications like Stellar Wallet requires extensive planning and a custom technology stack with powerful build and deployment tools. Without these, you won’t be able to develop an application that meets the standards and provides unhindered access to the Stellar network for initiating transactions and managing the fund holdings. Usually, developers come across numerous challenges while working on the project, owing to the lack of accurate research and referential documents for past projects. In other words, you won’t find too many relevant sources of information about the best ways to develop a Stellar wallet despite the availability of numerous SDKs and dev documentation on the official site. 

Besides, the major challenge that most developers encounter is building a high-performance and impeccably efficient wallet for the Stellar global network. Owing to this, we have curated a detailed guide, explaining the major ways in which you can enhance the Stellar wallet performance and build a cutting-edge application for the decentralized ecosystem. 

1. Leverage Stellar’s Native Features: Horizon API, Stellar-SDK

One of the best ways to ensure enhanced Stellar wallet performance is to use the native features of the network that won’t require any additional effort from the developer’s end. Stellar comes with numerous SDKs that allow developers to build a wallet based on their preferred languages, such as JavaScript, Python, AssemblyScript, and many more. These are pre-built development tools and components that come with numerous libraries, functions, frameworks, and APIs to establish a direct connection with the Soroban RPC network. They are best suited for developing and deploying smart contracts to the Soroban network and establishing a controlling mechanism for the wallet’s functionalities. 

Apart from the SDKs, developers can also use the Horizon API to build a high-performing wallet. It acts as a bridge between the Stellar network and the applications so that users can easily access the blockchain network and the integrated financial rails for carrying out different transactions, making cross-border payments, and swapping digital tokens from one form to another. To interact with the Horizon API, you can either use the Stellar SDK or the URL and web browser based on your project’s configurations and functional and technical scopes. 

2. Optimize Transaction Submission: Batch Transactions, Transaction Fee Optimization

Every Stellar wallet is concerned with facilitating and supporting optimized transactions on the Stellar global network. Unless and until you optimize the transactions to be executed, you won’t be able to enhance the wallet’s performance and ensure high-end functionality. To do so, you can follow the techniques described below. 

• Batch transactions: Batching is an inherent property of the Stellar smart contracts, namely Soroban, that allows users to make multiple payments in a single transaction. It doesn’t matter what the payment volumes are since the wallet will ensure appropriate and on-time fund delivery to the destinated location within time. Batching allows the execution of over 10,000 transactions within minutes. Additionally, it also provides easy access to the 400,000 off-ramps through which users can easily withdraw cash in their local currencies. 
• Optimization of transaction fees: Since every transaction on the Stellar network is associated with a certain fee, optimizing the amount will help in creating and deploying a high-performing wallet. To do so, you should define the maximum amount required to initiate and execute a transaction of the Stellar global network through the developed wallet. Also, the base fee limit can be used to calculate the transaction fee by multiplying the number of operations to be performed by the base value. Lastly, you can also leverage the State Archival Protocol that automatically deletes ledger entries once the rent balance reaches the zero level.

3. Implement Caching & Local State: Cache Data, Maintain Local State

Since wallets involve interaction with numerous datasets and also frequently, the practice of fetching all the information straight from the integrated database layer all the time isn’t reliable and efficient. It will not only slow down the application’s performance but also delay the operations to be performed. Besides, if any interim process is executed, the state of the concerned data will change, which will automatically impact the transactions. Owing to this, developers often leverage the practice of caching techniques, using which they create temporary storage for frequently accessed data so that the application won’t have to interact with the ingrained database layer all the time. 

Caching data has numerous benefits, which should be studied carefully before the final implementation. 

• Since the time needed to fetch any requested data associated with the operation is decreased significantly by caching, the wallet’s performance and response time can be enhanced tenfold. 
• With reduced dependency and usage of the database layer, the costs needed to manage the same or host the database on the web server are significantly reduced. 
• Caching can also reduce the bandwidth consumption of the server, thereby allowing the wallet to perform efficiently and much faster. 
• Caching allows fetching of the data from the cache memory, thereby reducing the load on the backend since the application won’t perform frequent data querying.

4. Consider Asynchronous Programming: Non-Blocking Operations, Promises or Async/Await

One of the best ways to enhance Stellar wallet performance is through asynchronous programming. As the software will be involved in numerous operations, it would be best to design the codebase in a way that all these functions can be run simultaneously on multiple threads rather than defining a waiting period for the completion of a single task. In other words, asynchronous programming will allow the wallet to carry out multiple operations without keeping the current thread on hold and executing another operation. Concurrent execution will lead to increased performance and reduced wait times for different functions, especially since the user can use the wallet to make payments and check the fund-holding balance at the same time.

5. Optimize UI/UX: Clear and Concise Interface, Progress Indicators, Error Handling

Additionally, you should also ensure the user interface of the Stellar wallet is enhanced and optimized properly for an undeniable visual appeal and higher level of user interaction. Without a clear UI design, it would be difficult for users to interact with the decentralized application and harness its true power by all means. Some of the best ways in which you can create an optimized UI/UX for the Stellar wallet are:

• Concise and crisp interface: One of the major factors you should keep an eye on is the visual clarity and crispiness of the interface design. For example, if you load all the textual and multimedia content in a single location, it will create a huge imbalance in negative spacing, leaving the rest of the page blank. So, you need to create a UI that is crisp, clean, and has a concise but detailed structure. 
• Progress indicators: Stellar wallets are primarily used for payment transactions, token swapping, and other such operations. So, you can integrate progress indicator components that will show the users the status of every operation in real time. Color-coding these indicators will also help you differentiate each operation state like failed, in progress, completed, initiated, rejected, and many more. 
• Error handling: With an efficient error handling process, you can enhance the user experience by mitigating the issues, assessing any potential impacts with the UI, and optimizing the functionalities. 
• Optimized navigation: Also, you need to ensure the navigation of the Stellar wallet is optimized, meaning users should have a clear directional sense as to which operation can be performed on what page and so on. Without proper navigation, it will be quite difficult for the users to use the wallet, and that would automatically demean the UX.

6. Security Best Practices: Secure Key Storage, Protect Against Phishing, Regular Updates

To enhance stellar wallet performance, you should work on implementing high-end and the best security practices. Since it is a decentralized application and also a hot wallet, constant exposure to the external world can raise security and data privacy concerns among the users. So, you should ensure the wallet is highly protected and secured from vulnerabilities and cyber threats. Following are some of the ways in which you can enhance the wallet’s security level. 

• Ensure there is a proper storage location for the private key pair, which acts as the user’s identity in the decentralized ecosystem. It shouldn’t be exposed to the external world and must be protected through the 256-AES encryption protocol. 
• Also, you should implement appropriate measures so that the wallet and its features are protected against phishing activities, which are indeed one of the major threats to hot wallets. 
• Lastly, deploy regular security updates and data patches to ensure the software remains protected against different types of internet vulnerabilities.

7. Performance Testing: Stress Testing, Benchmarking

Last but not least, you should run thorough testing on the wallet application before deploying the same to the Stellar network. For this, you should include both stress and performance testing schedules where you can analyze and optimize the server activities and wallet performance, respectively. An appropriate testing cycle will also help you detect any underlying problem with the Stellar wallet and mitigate the risks immediately.

Conclusion 

In this article, we have discussed the seven major ways in which you can easily improve the Stellar wallet performance and develop the best-in-breed application. From using the built-in Stellar SDKs to leveraging advanced security protocols, there are many strategies that you can use to ensure the dApp meets the standards and allows users to access the Stellar global network without any hindrance.