Oscore and IX Social: Empowering traders with .NET MAUI

Background on the company and application

Oscore Ltd is a UK-based software consulting firm and Microsoft partner. They specialize in the rapid delivery of high-performance apps and systems built on top of Microsoft technologies. They work with businesses of any size, from startups to enterprises, all of whom share an appetite to grow.

One of Oscore's notable projects is IX SOCIAL, a mobile app developed for their long-standing client INFINOX. INFINOX is a global brokerage firm, and IX SOCIAL is INFINOX's flagship Copy Trading application. Users can view, follow, and auto-copy the strategies of top traders. The app offers real-time updates on performance, graphical trading histories, customizable settings to manage risk, notifications regarding key events, and a wealth of other engaging features.

Technology choices and usage

After a review of available technologies, Oscore selected .NET MAUI for the apps and ASP.NET Core for the back end. This stack delivered multiple benefits:

• C#/.NET across the entire stack: a single, unified, high performance programming language with a huge community and unparalleled supporting resources.
• Fast, native, AOT-compiled code for both Android and iOS.
• Superb developer experience, with a single cross-functional team delivering the entire system, and developers moving freely between front and back-end tasks.
• Most importantly, an accelerated time to market and reduced development costs.

In addition to the programming platforms, Oscore leveraged Microsoft technologies to deliver an efficient DevOps setup. This includes GitHub Copilot for task automation, Azure DevOps for CI/CD, and App Center for crash reporting, logging and test build distribution.

Rapidly onboarding new app developers

Throughout the development process, Oscore was able to draw on their deep bench of talent to get fast and high-quality results. Two examples from the project team:

• Developer Kelvin Ndiritu, who had previously specialized in Python and machine learning, was drafted in initially to handle test automation using AWS Device Farm. He soon got up to speed with C#, .NET and .NET MAUI, and has remained one of the anchors of the project team since.
• Developer Konstantin Stukov, experienced in C# with frameworks like WPF, WinUI, and Avalonia, had previously spearheaded internal research projects with .NET MAUI. Using his deep .NET knowledge, he developed libraries such as Oscore.Maui.Biometric and Maui.Android.InAppUpdates. These now have been available to the open-source community (check them out on https://github.com/oscoreio ).

This mix of skills available to Oscore, combined with the inherent power of the .NET MAUI/.NET/ASP.NET CORE development platform, enabled the team to deliver a high quality cross-platform app in record time.

Benefits of .NET MAUI

.NET MAUI was instrumental in the development of IX SOCIAL because it delivered a top quality development experience, compiling to fast, native code for each of the two predominant app platforms, Android and Apple (other platforms also supported). The extensive and active community offered valuable support and resources. There are plentiful resources online in the form of videos, trainings and how-tos, provided both by Microsoft and by the community. .NET MAUI was a relatively new framework when development on IX SOCIAL first started but rapidly matured with the release of .NET 8 and is a now a premier app development platform, particularly for development teams already well versed in .NET.

The team at Oscore appreciated multiple aspects of working with .NET MAUI. They valued its structured framework and intuitive design, which simplified code maintenance. The substantial and active community provided significant support and resources, enhancing the overall development experience. The ability to share data transfer objects (DTOs) between the client and server decreased development impedance and streamlined front to-back data transfer. Furthermore, features such as haptic feedback, Lottie animations, and Telegram-based login were seamlessly integrated into the application, enhancing its functionality.

In summary, .NET MAUI enabled Oscore to deliver a superior, cross-platform application that met the requirements of INFINOX and its users. INFINOX’s already substantial copy trading business experienced rapid and consistent growth in terms of absolute numbers and market share following the release of the new app. IX SOCIAL has been awarded multiple prizes, and helped INFINOX achieve the Best Copy Trading Broker 2024 award at the prestigious Money Expo Global awards ceremony. Ultimately, by choosing the solid, intuitive, flexible and high-performance .NET MAUI development framework, Oscore was able to deliver a superior, cross-platform application for their client INFINOX.