Thread by @mvwi

Had a tweet that got moderately popular among the #designtwitter crew yesterday. Not a huge number of replies in thread but it kicked off dozens of DMs, 90% of which were asking the same question:

What's the biggest unsolved problem in crypto UX?

My answer?

Wallets. 100%.

Wallet UX is a clusterfuck of recovery phrases, seeds, public/private keys, addresses, and chains — words that aren't words to anyone outside of the crypto world.

(Good luck deciphering them as an average person considering we can barely get them right)

The mental labor needed to understand even these most basic concepts is on par with relearning calculus. Finding ways to make them accessible makes people like me resort to crimes against art like this in an attempt to get them across

https://twitter.com/mvwi/status/1424899669130453004

Even after getting the basic terms down there's the minefield of problems around cross-chain compatibility to deal with.

What do you mean can't I store my Bitcoin and my Ether in the same wallet?

I can explain this technically but from a user experience pov it's baffling.

And to make matters worse, we're about to layer a whole *new* set of problems on top.

Everyone in Ethereum is jazzed right now about the scaling possibilities of layer 2s but no one is talking about the awful user experience that's coming our way.

Imagine bridging assets from ETH to Polygon and thinking you screwed up the transfer only to realize the reason you can't see them is because your wallet doesn't have the Polygon chain active.

Get ready for millions in 'lost' assets over the next 2yrs from ppl w/ hidden chains.

Compound these issues with the pain of juggling addresses across chains, a lack of trust & transparency in crypto payments in general, and the fear of losing money.

So many UX problems to solve.

This may sound depressing / insurmountable but it's not. This is just what the birth of a new technology looks like.

It's always awkward & painful

eg: The earliest cars were all but impossible to drive because their controls were such a nightmare. (Model Ts reverse pedal lol)

BUT — imagine being the person who got to fix that. Who got to decide that turn signals should go on the left of the steering wheel and that the gas pedal should be on the right side of the brake.

Think about how many people that design has impacted.

What a legacy to leave.

Crypto is coming. The people working on its UX are designing how we'll interact with each other over the next few hundred years and they're doing it RIGHT NOW.

That may sound sensationalist but it's not. The level of impact a great designer (aka YOU) could have rn is HUGE.

YOU could be the one who designs crypto's turn signal, QWERTY keyboard, Tinder swipe, or whatever other piece of UX history you prefer.

OR...

...you could spend the rest of your career in a cube building deck templates for a company you hate.

Your call.

/thread

As I mentioned in the tweet that spawned this rant, if you're a designer interested in getting involved send me a DM, happy to help however I can.