Saturn Portal

Problem

Filecoin Saturn is a CDN that accelerates data stored on the Filecoin Network and IPFS. The Saturn network launched in Q4 2022 and by August 2023 — when this project began — there were over 2000 points of presence serving content.

However, the onboarding process for new customers wanting to use the Saturn network to accelerate their content lacked a seamless and user-friendly experience. Customers faced challenges in setting up, understanding cost, and analyzing network usage. Additionally, a registration process for customers was necessary to generate a UCAN keypair for network metering.

Solution

Recognizing the need for an improved customer experience, Protocol Labs hired Subvisual to help them develop Saturn Portal — a platform aiming to address these pain points by enabling customers to easily set up their clients, and monitor their usage and costs. Our team for this project consisted of one product designer and two software developers who worked closely with the PL team.

We first started by going through the requirements list to grasp the project's scope and assess the need of each requirement. To facilitate this, we organized the requirements into different categories. This process generated a set of initial questions, some of which required further consideration. The helpful answers we got allowed us to delve into shaping the Information Architecture and primary user flows of the product.

Once the Information Architecture and main user flows were established, we transitioned to the wireframing stage, subsequently testing the wireframes with the Protocol Labs team. Through various tests and tweaks, we finally got to a more polished version of the MVP.

In this first version of the product, users are already able to:

• Easily view information regarding their consumption and requests on the Dashboard;
• Change their overage limit, alter or cancel their plan, and download receipts on the Manage Subscription page;
• Quickly check the details of their integrations and the status of the service worker for each integration, and add new integrations on the Integrations page;
• Edit their personal information, set up a 2FA mechanism, change their preferred payment method, and customize the portal theme on the Settings page.

Outcome

The Protocol Labs team was very happy with the MVP of Saturn Portal, unveiling its first version during Lab Week 23 at Devconnect in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2023. The initial release was invite-only, allowing for testing with a small group of users.

Since then, Saturn has been deprecated, as its team has joined forces with web3.storage to develop Storacha Network.