The cryptoverse, an unexplored land of magical protocols and daring entrepreneurs, offers a vision of a promised decentralized era. Realizing this prophecy requires addressing a critical challenge: the user experience (UX). From Luke Youngblood, founder of Moonwell, a passionate advocate for improving the crypto user experience. In his work, he currently encourages developers to more seriously consider user safety and security within their projects. His plea harkens back to the Hippocratic Oath. Most importantly, he encourages us all to stay true to “first, do no harm” as we create and deploy this exciting new array of technologies.

Youngblood’s concerns, if they read as familiar to you, help illustrate the massive pain points stopping the world from widely adopting Web3. Not only is getting one of these token swaps a painful experience when transactions regularly fail for lack of sufficient fees. Keeping track of multiple wallets and jumping from marketplace to marketplace increases the burden and confusion. Unintuitive user interfaces add to the technical hurdles that scare away newcomers. Blockchain applications usually look like a highly complex, enterprise control dashboard instead of a streamlined, consumer app, with resulting user experience (UX) design issues that confuse users. These issues combined make for a poor user experience, stifling development and accessibility of the growing crypto space.

DreamingCrypto sees making transactions as seamless as possible as the key to improving the entire crypto UX. Making it quicker, easier, and more intuitive for users to interact with crypto applications is essential for attracting and retaining a broader audience. Only by solving these UX issues will the cryptoverse truly be able to unlock its full potential and bring in the age of a truly decentralized world.

Addressing the Pain Points

There are a number of reasons why crypto UX is the way it is today. The biggest barrier for everyone One of the biggest problems is the usability nightmare that is wallet creation & management. As we’ve seen, users still have difficulty navigating and keeping track of wallets on different platforms. In addition, the requirement to calculate and pay gas fees for each transaction manually adds complexity and frustration. The very nature of blockchain technology, like the need to comprehend consensus mechanisms and cryptography, compounds this issue.

Today’s crypto UX is not always as polished and intuitive as Web2 applications. As with crypto, in the traditional web, things like authentication and payments are easy and frictionless. Yet in the crypto-world, those benefits quickly turn onerous and arcane. This gap is a significant barrier for prospective new users. They’re accustomed to the comfort and convenience of Web2, making it difficult for them to pivot.

Potential Solutions

The good news is that some very creative solutions are coming online to tackle these pain points. Whether improving the user experience or making the ecosystem more secure, these solutions will continue fostering the adoption of crypto technologies.

  • Biometric one-click wallet creation: Passkey wallets offer a revolutionary approach to onboarding, enabling users to create wallets with a simple biometric scan. This eliminates the need for complex passwords or seed phrases, making the process faster and more convenient.
  • Password-free security: Passkeys eliminate the need for users to remember complex passwords or 12-word secret phrases, reducing the risk of loss or forgetfulness.
  • Simplified wallet recovery: Passkeys enable users to access and recover their wallet without needing a password or 12-word secret phrase, making the recovery process smoother and less prone to errors.

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Today, cross-chain bridges play an important role, enabling connection and interaction across various blockchain networks. These bridges make it easy to transfer assets and data across multiple chains. They promote interoperability and facilitate the removal of silos that have historically separated digital assets and data. Several mechanisms facilitate cross-chain transfers:

  • Locking and Minting Process: This process involves locking assets on the source chain and minting wrapped replicas on the destination chain, ensuring secure transfer of assets between chains.
  • Smart Contracts:* Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLCs) use cryptographic hash functions to ensure transactions are only carried out when specific requirements are satisfied within a predetermined window of time.
  • Relay Chains: These serve as bridges between blockchains and are used by certain cross-chain platforms to facilitate communication and asset transfers.
  • Sidechains: These allow assets to be transferred between a secondary chain and a primary blockchain, enabling greater flexibility and scalability.

Prioritizing User Safety and Security

User safety and security must be a top priority. In order to achieve a positive user experience, developers need to build strong security protocols to prevent fraud, theft and other malicious conduct. Several best practices can help ensure a secure crypto environment:

  • Implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Adding an extra layer of security to user accounts by requiring two types of identification before accessing an account.
  • Enable 2FA for withdrawals: Specifically enabling 2FA for withdrawals in the exchange app to prevent unauthorized transactions.
  • Use secure storage of assets: Storing assets in a secure manner, such as in cold storage, to prevent hacking and theft.
  • Conduct regular security audits: Regularly conducting security audits to identify and address vulnerabilities in the application.
  • Adhere to regulatory standards: Adhering to regulatory standards and Cryptocurrency Security Standards (CCSS) to ensure a secure crypto environment.

By incorporating these security measures, developers can take steps to protect users and their information from being compromised. This helps create a more trustworthy and confident crypto environment.

Learning from Web2 and Cloud Computing

There are indeed a number of valuable lessons that the crypto world can learn from the evolution of Web2 and the adoption of cloud computing. In Web2, user experience has often played the most important role in adoption. Web2 offers familiar authentication methods like FaceID or passkeys, whereas crypto UX often requires seed phrases, which can be a barrier to entry. Web2 offers payments that are invisible to the user, while in crypto, transactions involve users having to understand gas fees and multiple steps in a transaction process.

Cloud computing succeeds in part because it abstracts away the complexity of all that infrastructure. This helps developers focus on developing applications without the server management hassles. The entire crypto ecosystem stands to benefit immensely from some smart infrastructure abstraction. This simplification will clarify the software development process, letting developers build clearer, easier to use applications. By drawing parallels with Web2 UX and cloud computing adoption, the crypto world can accelerate its progress towards mainstream adoption.

Ultimately, better crypto UX goes way beyond helping users avoid mistakes. We’re committed to developing a truly inclusive and accessible ecosystem. This environment will enable people to realize the promise of decentralized technologies to their fullest extent. Heed Moonwell’s call and take a “first, do no harm” approach to adoption. As a community, we have the power to unlock the cryptoverse’s potential and realize a more decentralized future.