The easy answer would be to compare it to the first video games right? It gets better over time.
I think the right answer is that the space is so early, it's risky for established, great UX people to drop their comfy salary at an established company to work on a decentralized exchange. Once the incentives align better, the products will get better.
My hope is that in 5 years time the UX will be so good, we'll be able to get loans, provide LP and borrow against a variety of assets with our eyes closed.
It starts with confusing basic terminology for trivial usage (e.g. 'signing' and 'address'), proceeds to get worse from there. A 'wallet' is described as hot/cold and hardware/software and single/multi-sig. How do you easily support both 'mainnet' (actual live) and 'testnets' (essentially your fantasy league). You'll need to 'import the contract address' for a lot of coins in order to see your 'stake' (aka balance) in the wallet.
On the merchant side, the technological workarounds to higher transaction fees and slower processing time versus traditional credit cards lead to 'L2' aka 'layer-2', sometimes 'on-/off-chain' solutions. And finally the mathematical and network security issues are usually hidden deeply and covered in double-speak to the most critical question - where is the key to your wallet? Hint: it's not the secret phrase...
Do you mean the websites or the experience of using crypto?
The first can be resolved, I'm not sure the second can.
In order to compete with existing payment methods, they would have to give up the "be your own bank" ethos. (i.e. custodial wallets will be required to match existing UX of credit cards and pay apps)
To me it seems philosophical and unavoidable based on the tech, for permissionless blockchains.
Consider what happens when you lose your bank or credit card. Do you lose your money? What happens if someone spends using a stolen card?
With wallets, you lose the key, you lose the money. That is really bad UX. You can create a recovery method, splitting the key up among people you "trust" but then actually recovering it is far more difficult than calling your bank and waiting for some mail. What happens if enough of those trusted people become unreachable?
There are of course custodial wallets, but then you end up with a centralized system where you can be blocked from using your wallet.
It's inertia. Why would an "account" be any different from a "wallet?" Or an "secret key" from "routing number?"
And yeah the UX is not quite there yet. It gets better depending on the project. Crypto.com for example has a partnership with Visa and lets you have a prepaid card tied to your portfolio. But their app is centralized and there's a lot of shiny terms and if you don't have a friend or good resources to learn, most people give up quickly. Just like how kids need to be taught financial literacy, it's not like we learned how to use credit cards out of the blue.
And since crypto is volatile, it has the same "oh I don't touch stock market stuff because I always lose money" and people think crypto overall is a scam not worth the hassle.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 30.0 ms ] threadI think the right answer is that the space is so early, it's risky for established, great UX people to drop their comfy salary at an established company to work on a decentralized exchange. Once the incentives align better, the products will get better.
My hope is that in 5 years time the UX will be so good, we'll be able to get loans, provide LP and borrow against a variety of assets with our eyes closed.
What about poorly designed protocols / projects then? I am not sure any UX person could fix a burning train, right?
Shouldn't the UX people be included as early as possible? That would probably help right?
On the merchant side, the technological workarounds to higher transaction fees and slower processing time versus traditional credit cards lead to 'L2' aka 'layer-2', sometimes 'on-/off-chain' solutions. And finally the mathematical and network security issues are usually hidden deeply and covered in double-speak to the most critical question - where is the key to your wallet? Hint: it's not the secret phrase...
The first can be resolved, I'm not sure the second can.
In order to compete with existing payment methods, they would have to give up the "be your own bank" ethos. (i.e. custodial wallets will be required to match existing UX of credit cards and pay apps)
So that whole "be your own bank" concept is a constraint to good UX?
Do you think it's possible for that paradigm to change? Where it's just as easy to work with crypto?
Is it a matter of not enough UX expertise or is it a tech issue?
Consider what happens when you lose your bank or credit card. Do you lose your money? What happens if someone spends using a stolen card?
With wallets, you lose the key, you lose the money. That is really bad UX. You can create a recovery method, splitting the key up among people you "trust" but then actually recovering it is far more difficult than calling your bank and waiting for some mail. What happens if enough of those trusted people become unreachable?
There are of course custodial wallets, but then you end up with a centralized system where you can be blocked from using your wallet.
And yeah the UX is not quite there yet. It gets better depending on the project. Crypto.com for example has a partnership with Visa and lets you have a prepaid card tied to your portfolio. But their app is centralized and there's a lot of shiny terms and if you don't have a friend or good resources to learn, most people give up quickly. Just like how kids need to be taught financial literacy, it's not like we learned how to use credit cards out of the blue.
And since crypto is volatile, it has the same "oh I don't touch stock market stuff because I always lose money" and people think crypto overall is a scam not worth the hassle.
Crypto. Everything you don't know about computers with everything you don't know about money.