Transaction signing is here! For those of you who were at our latest maker session you have probably heard of this, the next version of the Ryder prototype firmware is able to sign all common Stacks transactions. 👀

Take a peek at the first-ever broadcast transaction signed by a Ryder here: https://explorer.stacks.co/txid/0xeb977f37b3c83099f18a0a68f0affe1b94910e3fc55191bf33358e66a63fd1f5?chain=testnet.

But of course, we are far from done. Transaction signing and decoding are two very different things. While the Ryder can now produce the proper Authorization header (the part where the transaction signature lives), it cannot fully decode transaction payloads yet. A payload contains information about the transaction itself. In an STX transfer, it contains who is getting how much. For a contract call, it details the call parameters and so on. The Ryder has to decode this information to show you, as the owner, what you are about to sign. It is rather essential to know to whom you are sending your precious tokens!

These displays are still rudimentary, which is why we need a little extra time before we can release it. Prototype firmware 0.0.4 will enable everyone to pass transactions to the Ryder to request signing.

Since we are on UI, we are currently on a concept that we have been calling “app screens” internally. As you know, at Ryder, we take a human-centered design approach that naturally includes user interfaces. People should not be shown cryptic hexadecimal values but rather something that is intuitively meaningful (obviously not skipping over the raw data for those that want it).

Stay tuned for prototype firmware 0.0.4 to start playing around with signing Stacks transactions!