https://mhonkasalo.substack.com/p/crypto-doesnt-have-a-ux-problem

“What is an @-sign anyway?”

UX is most often cited as the common barrier to crypto “mainstream adoption”.

The litany goes something like this:

• Gas fees are weird and unintuitive “what is MATIC anyway?”.
• Non-human readable addresses are weird and intuitive “what is this 0x.. string anyway?”.
• Private key management is weird and intuitive “what are these 12 words anyway?”
• Using so many different chains is weird an intuitive “what is this Arbitrum place anyway?”

Each of these is a worthwhile problem to solve. However, I think their importance as an actual barrier to mainstream adoption is vastly overstated.

The common phrasing being “abstracting away the complexities of crypto”.

Boomers solving zoomer problems

I sometimes wonder if we (say 28+ years old, I’m 29) are the boomers solving UX problems we imagine are real, but ones more technologically savvy younger people don’t care about.

With the mentality of a good product manager at one of the FANG companies, we’re all about simplifying the UX.

However, if this was the early-2000s, imagine what such a product manager would be saying about emails:

• People are never going to understand this “@” sign thing.
• Why is there a .com or a .org at the end?
• Why can users choose any arbitrary email? How do you know you are even emailing the right person if their name is Bob Smith?
• What’s the “Gmail” part? Why does everyone need to know the service provider?