Despite having the technology to make crypto as simple as PayPal, clunky user experiences are still keeping mainstream investors away from mass adoption.
Getting into crypto as a newbie investor can feel like assembling IKEA furniture with instructions written in hieroglyphics. And every new layer of innovation adds another piece to the puzzle.
There’s no doubt that in the midst of exciting times for crypto when the potential for mass adoption has never been higher, crypto’s user experience (UX) is a barrier to entry for ordinary investors.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We already have many of the tools we need to make crypto transactions intuitive and accessible to everyone.
Let me explain.
Crypto UX Has Come a Long Way
Crypto’s UX has improved markedly in recent years. Wallets are sleeker, onboarding processes are smoother, and platforms are creating more intuitive user interfaces. Swapping tokens on a decentralized exchange no longer feels like defusing a bomb.
But for newcomers, the landscape is still a tangle.
Bridging assets across chains can feel like a nerve-wracking guessing game for newcomers. Layer 2 rollups introduce a maze of new options and fees. And most ordinary inventors simply don’t have the needed knowledge base — or the patience — to grapple with specialized jargon and concepts like private keys, liquidity pools, minting, or yield.
Even when developers simplify one aspect of the experience, they often create complexity elsewhere.
There are currently 100-plus L2s listed on L2beat. That’s a confusing landscape even for seasoned pros, let alone someone dipping their toes into DeFi for the first time.
Why UX Matters for Mass Adoption
At the moment, UX improvements are taking a lot of time to develop, while many are expecting mass adoption to happen in the very near future.
And while some DeFi developers see poor UX as an unavoidable tradeoff for decentralization, this attitude risks leaving crypto stuck in its current niche, cut off from the mainstream adoption that could unlock its full potential.
Consider this: America’s pensioners hold $37.8 trillion in retirement assets, according to US government data. Imagine if even just one to two percent of that flowed into crypto as retirees looked to diversify their portfolios. With that kind of money at stake, isn’t it worth considering how you can Boomer-proof your project?
The staggering success of Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US is an object lesson in how — to adapt the adage from Field of Dreams — if you build it safer and simpler, they will come.
The ETFs, which now represent more than $100 billion in assets under management, prove that investors want exposure to Bitcoin, but they want the investing experience to be as secure and seamless as trading, say, the S&P 500 from their Fidelity app.
Yet crypto adoption remains low. The most recent figures from the US Federal Reserve show that just seven percent of Americans held or used cryptocurrency. Triple-A estimates that globally, cryptocurrency ownership stands at just 6.8%.
The lesson is clear: If crypto wants to go mainstream, its user experience must cater to everyone — not just the degens and early adopters.
The Keys To Better Crypto UX
The good news? It’s way easier to fix crypto’s UX problem than developers make it out to be.
It comes down to just two main things:
- Simpler transactions
- Interoperability between blockchains.
If we fix both of these, we can transform the user experience. And it’s not a pipe dream: decentralized protocols offer us the tech to do this.
Simpler transactions
Sending or receiving crypto should be as simple as sending fiat currency via apps like PayPal or Revolut. But crypto payments often require copy-pasting long wallet addresses, double-checking every character to avoid irreversible mistakes, and dealing with unpredictable gas fees.
Web3 domain name services, like ENS, Unstoppable Domains, or SPACE ID, solve this by replacing intimidating 42-character crypto addresses with short, easy-to-remember, human-readable handles. This makes crypto transactions so much simpler and more secure, practically eliminating the potential for human error by providing a more traditional online experience.
Cross-chain interoperability
But it’s also important that web3 domains work across chains, and are integrated with popular crypto and web2 applications. The current blockchain landscape is bewildering, with a dizzying array of projects and protocols.
Having a different domain name for every chain isn’t helpful, it’s just more confusing. You wouldn’t have different email addresses for every server you use. The complex mechanics of cross-chain transactions should happen invisibly, under the hood. Users don’t need to know how it works, just as PayPal’s app users don’t need to think about the systems behind their fiat transactions.
The Road Ahead
With developments like the Bitcoin ETFs and increasing support for crypto from governments, publicly traded companies, sovereign wealth funds, pensions, and of course, the average investor, there is a lot of potential for mainstream adoption.
But even the most intrepid of investors won’t stick around if the UX is hard to navigate. Crypto offers a lot of potential, but if the price to access these opportunities comes at a potential cost of irreversibly losing everything with just one mistake, it will continue to scare many away,
There’s a goldmine in designing interfaces and integrations that let someone with no technical knowledge trade Bitcoin as easily as they would the S&P 500.
A lot of the technology is already here. Now it’s up to us to build the intuitive tools that will unlock crypto’s massive potential.
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