Visualizing The Bidirectionality of Trust Limits

[fabioberger]

When the Trust Lines are displayed on the page, there is no way to distinguish which trust lines the account has set, and which it has received from other accounts. In addition to this, if there is a bi-directional trust line that has been both set and received by two parties, the trust line only shows up once and without the potentially differing trust limits specified for either party.

What must now be decided is how to best display Trust Lines (bidirectional or unidirectional) in such a way that a user can clearly understand which account has entrusted which account and for how much of a given currency.

[fabioberger]

One potential way to do it is to visualize trust limits as two tables: one containing trust issued by the account and trust received by the account. In this way, if there is a bi-directional trust line, it will show up in two tables, each time with the trusted limit of funds in the corresponding direction. As an example, the below account has both trusted and is entrusted by another account for the FAB currency.

It has however received trust for a limit of 40 FAB while only entrusting the other party for 20 FAB. All this information is lost in the current representation of trust lines as show in the above post from the same account using the current UI.

Thoughts, comments, questions?

[deckar01]

I don't like that so much of the tables will be duplicated, but I think it is better than stuffing 2 more columns into the trust lines table.

There will primarily be 2 types of account:

• Users who give trust to a couple gateways, each for multiple currencies. (2-20 trust lines given)
• Gateways who give trust to tons of users, each for multiple currencies. (100-100,000 lines received)

This definitely builds a case for separating it out into 2 tables. (And eventually aggregating trust lines into a more consumable form).

My feedback:

• Trust limit should be next to balance.
• "Limit" instead of "Trust Limit", since we don't prefix balance, currency, or issuer with "Trust".
• "Trust Given" instead of "Trust Set" for clarity and symmetry with "Trust Received".
• Drop "Trust Lines" and make "Trust Received" and "Trust Given" first class sections.

@jedmccaleb's feedback:

• Don't make the account viewer more complex.
• This is meant to be a reference app and shouldn't abstract the data too much.
• Just add the trust limits to the existing table.

[fabioberger]

Thanks for the feedback. Here are the two options we are between then:
@deckar01's Feedback:

@jedmccaleb's Feedback:

I understand the desire to keep Stellar-viewer as a reference app and so the less abstraction applied to the API data, the better. At the same time, just returning the API response in a table still seems confusing to someone exploring the API and trying to understand what exactly results from giving and receiving trust. I personally prefer deckar's version but am happy to defer the final decision to someone on the Stellar team.

Thoughts?

[jedmccaleb]

Yeah the two table approach is fine. Thanks!

[fabioberger]

Thanks for weighing in Jed! I will update my pull request to reflect these changes!