The author believes that while cryptocurrencies hold potential, their complexity and lack of simplified user experience make mass adoption difficult.
Author: blackb-rd
Translation: Plainspoken Blockchain
I can't make enough money from cryptocurrency to buy a new house or car, but overall, I think cryptocurrency is a good idea. Maybe I don't understand the deeper political details behind cryptocurrency enough, but in reality, it has positively and legitimately benefited my life.
I feel like I am between two types of users: on one hand, those who are still easily deceived or don't know how to save on transaction fees, and on the other, those who have seen everything cryptocurrency has to offer. This allows me to connect and interact with a variety of people, from newcomers just starting to those who have built careers in cryptocurrency. In this article, I want to share some of my thoughts and reflect on the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency.
1. Where did I start?
My profession is content manager, focusing on educational practices. Currently, I design introductory content for beginners and those who consider themselves advanced users. In fact, I originally developed blockchain courses for a master's program at a university, starting with directed acyclic graphs (which I still haven't used) and 51% attacks. But even so, it didn't save me: despite mastering this knowledge, it took me about a year to figure out how to save on transaction fees on the Ethereum network. At that time, terms like Optimism, Avalanche, and Arbitrum were just hollow buzzwords to me. It's embarrassing to admit, but it's true.
Over time, the information gradually became clearer, and when I understood the connection between consensus mechanisms, block formation in blockchain, and transaction placement, everything became clear. In fact, it took me two rounds of studying blockchain technology to truly understand it. Is that slow? Maybe. The comments will tell.
In any case, after two years of moderate learning, I finally feel like I basically understand most of it (including some of the finer details). However, many concepts only started to become intuitive when I focused on studying. For example, to understand Ethereum's L2 solutions, you first need to grasp the problems Ethereum faces, and then understand the solutions that L2 provides — or you could choose to blindly trust others and start using L2 directly. Even so, ordinary users wouldn't feel these solutions are important to them — they're concerned about how to save on transaction fees and avoid spending more on Ethereum than they earn in a day. And when I opened Avalanche's official website, the first thing I saw was the call for 'building without boundaries.'
Avalanche's official website — does not mention how retail users can save on transaction fees in a single sentence.
Then, clicking on 'New to Web3?' (why would beginners know what Web3 is?), I was bombarded with terms like 'smart contracts' and 'Web3'. Your parents wouldn't even know they're on Web2 or that they're being invited into a world called Web3, which includes smart contracts. Some might even remember Web1.
This might be a point for discussion on whether ordinary people should move beyond centralized exchanges. But my inclination is to make the decentralized space accessible to everyone, not just geeks, content managers like me, merchants, and developers. So, how do ordinary people feel about the crypto industry? Through conversations with about 100 people and observing thousands of messages, I've gained some insights.
2. Public opinion
'Cryptocurrency is a scam' — by the end of 2024, there will still be people who believe cryptocurrency is a scam. Interestingly, this is almost like a 'bell curve' meme: cryptocurrency is seen as a scam by those who have never come into contact with it at all, or by those who are involved in project development. I haven't reached IQ 145; I'm at the middle of this distribution.
These people are victims of unrealized narratives; you can't expect constructive thinking from a narrative — it simply tells a story. For example, 'Just buy my cryptocurrency token and get a 10x return, buy a Lamborghini.' This narrative seems to trace back to the ICO craze of 2016–2017. After that, the narrative failed, leading to a counter-narrative: cryptocurrency is a scam. Of course, the root of this negative attitude is people's ancient resistance to new things, which has been nourished by scams from the past few years and current ones. Nowadays, 'buy my token' has turned into meme coins, but fortunately, meme coins no longer represent the entire industry.
Top influencers who are not focused on cryptocurrency still confuse centralized exchanges with decentralized exchanges. And ordinary people (even advanced IT professionals, and even former NASA employees) completely do not understand the role of cryptocurrency; who can blame them? The cryptocurrency industry has not simplified user experience, let alone explained its relationship with traditional finance.
At some point, I tried to dive into understanding blockchain — beyond 'distributed databases' — and figure out the roles of blocks and transactions within it. Even the language models kept feeding me the same analogies, complicating matters: 'Imagine a ledger that records transactions...' Imagine the frustration of an average person trying to understand a blockchain explorer, let alone figuring out when their transactions were confirmed. There hasn't been any improvement in this area for four years.
Do I need to watch a mini-course from Stanford University just to send some money to a friend without losing a $50 transaction fee when Ethereum gas fees soar? This is a rhetorical question.
Looking at the huge gap between the terminology of cryptocurrency and the way non-crypto users communicate, it feels like the current user experience is built by developers for developers — or, at best, designed by hardcore crypto enthusiasts for other hardcore enthusiasts. These are completely different linguistic worlds, making it hard for someone with no technical background to break through. This complexity generally helps maintain exit liquidity, but if we want more people to come in, it becomes a disadvantage. Having such a complex linguistic environment for basic operations like buying and selling seems a bit excessive.
But on the other hand, should we really try to get people to understand more than just USDT? Or is it enough to simply let them buy an Avalanche card for everyday purchases?
3. 'I still consider myself a beginner'
This is a self-assessment of people who are familiar with centralized trading platforms, understand decentralization (but have not used its 'benefits'), and are trying to invest in crypto assets. Again, this has nothing to do with education level — these people are very diverse. Very few go further; AAVE is their 'boundary' (TVL data supports this). Some even don’t know they can avoid high fees on Ethereum, let alone how to check the fees, but everyone is struggling with the protocol interfaces. Each protocol feels different, making it unclear what to do, creating a fear of continuing, ultimately leading them to stop participating — this is a real quote from a crypto venture fund employee.
It's hard to blame protocols for not caring about user-friendliness, as these issues should be resolved through standardization. But now imagine a standardized crypto protocol web and mobile interface; it does sound a bit far-fetched. Moreover, no one knows how to check their transaction status: why a transaction is stuck for hours, whether their funds are lost, or where to seek support (which doesn't exist). Almost no one understands blockchain explorers. If they have heard of them, they don't know where to find them. Should I mention how difficult it is to find links to these explorers without getting scammed?
From my experience, a simple and obvious conclusion is that the fewer extra steps required to achieve a goal, the more likely people are to succeed. And the current customer journey map (CJM) resembles that infamous funnel, with Vitalik seemingly sitting at the bottom of it.
For these people, 'staking ETH to support network security' means nothing. To understand this concept, one must first understand the PoS consensus mechanism, which means you need to understand why consensus mechanisms are important.
The sad reality is that even those 'beginners' who seem more 'advanced' than true novices are still just exit liquidity. The worst-case scenario is that these 'beginners' lose access to their funds. For example, one of my clients panicked after creating a second wallet linked to her MetaMask account on Fuel Network, thinking her money was lost. This makes me feel like the current crypto industry is actually just traditional financial tools, where people are invited in, make money, or at best, break even, before returning to traditional finance.
Considering that I still can't buy sausages with Bitcoin in Europe, this seems to be the reality. Is that bad? Not really. Should someone be held accountable for this? Hard to say, as buying sausages with cryptocurrencies requires explicit government approval. It can't be achieved by enthusiasts and developers alone. However, despite our constant talk of borderless transactions and the tokenization of sausages, this aspect has received surprisingly little attention in the industry, even though it could genuinely improve people's lives.
4. Advanced users — myth or reality?
This question, of course, is meant to highlight the toxic situation in the industry, where people often see each other as fools or at best, beginners. In the crypto industry, so-called 'advanced users' are essentially those with complete specialist skills. What I consider 'advanced' users are those who depend on this industry for their livelihood in some way: algorithmic traders, analysts, developers, and those who exploit various profit mechanisms (like wash trading, node operators, gamblers, etc.).
Interestingly, they can be divided into two types: highly empathetic and highly toxic. The reason is simple — there's a huge gap between the beginners mentioned in the previous paragraph and the advanced users discussed in this section. Toxic users are unwilling to help beginners bridge this gap, and only those who are empathetic can explain what is happening. People in the crypto industry often help each other. On the other hand, I've seen a chat group where even asking 'What's the difference between staking and liquid staking?' would get you muted.
For these people, becoming advanced users requires years of learning and unequal financial investments. However, even 'advanced' is a relative term — one person might be very experienced in analyzing the business models of crypto projects, but if they're not careful, they might become exit liquidity in a meme coin or fall victim to an MEV attack. Even in a hurry, they might get scammed into a phishing address in their transaction history.
By the way, the security issues in the crypto industry deserve a separate article. Besides all the complexities I mentioned above, users will soon face issues of security and funds protection. And this challenge will never lose relevance, regardless of skill level. I once heard a story about someone stealing a private key by monitoring screen radiation. But these are just some thoughts; this is a conceptual issue in the industry: more freedom = more responsibility.
From a practical standpoint, based on our user onboarding experience, when users start regularly using non-custodial wallets, I would consider them advanced users. Coincidentally, these individuals usually navigate protocols well and don't get lost in specialized technologies like Uni V3. At this point, the level of advancement begins to show a right-skewed distribution: the degree of advancement far exceeds any level of ignorance. Generally speaking, understanding all the basic concepts in the industry requires 3 to 6 months of concentrated study, while reaching skill limits and understanding details might take longer. This seems to be the key to dividing people into highly toxic or highly empathetic categories.
By the way, 3 to 6 months is not an arbitrary number. That’s exactly how long it takes a former banker to immerse themselves in crypto concepts.
5. My focus
Perhaps I seem to be criticizing or skeptical. In parts, I might be, but globally, I understand that this is how it is now, and it can't simply be requested from Avalanche's customer success department to 'simplify' everything. I want to draw attention to the paradox of this situation. Many people in the industry are waiting for retail liquidity to flood in — that is, mass adoption. It seems this should be the reason for pushing Bitcoin's value to millions or tens of billions, or alleviating regulatory pressure, or protecting people’s assets from banks' mistakes or abuses. Essentially, different stakeholders — crypto investors, crypto anarchists, and ordinary globalists — all have their reasons. However, the situation becomes absurd — mass adoption is impossible to achieve when even a basic user onboarding process can't be found, not even on the L2 homepages that claim to improve users' lives.
Moreover, it’s interesting that this task often falls on the shoulders of ordinary users (or YouTubers). Most newcomers get stuck on centralized exchanges (CEX), and these exchanges are only loosely connected to the ideals of blockchain and decentralization. And when beginners are trapped on CEX, the decentralized space is still just a subcategory of traditional finance, as it is a playground for tech-savvy users with ample free time to self-actualize.
Telegram tries to attract traffic through airdrops and TG mini-apps, providing an interactive immersive experience. It's better than nothing, but it also leads to two problems:
1) The entire immersive experience is limited to the TON ecosystem (hopefully only up to now).
2) A large group of people (131 million) were disappointed by the Hamster Kombat airdrop, becoming victims of the narrative that 'crypto is a scam.'
One of the most interesting factors driving mass adoption that I've seen is the call to learn about Bitcoin. This is undoubtedly a good practice, but first of all, there was a political theory in the mid-19th century that was also promoted as the gateway to a brighter future (of course, the masses never went to learn it). Secondly, I bet people are more likely to jokingly buy Bitcoin influenced by crypto Twitter than to buy it after reading the white paper. Here, I advocate a bit of realism.
I don't know if we really need mass adoption, or if the whole industry is just a quirky way of wealth redistribution. Or perhaps we do need mass adoption, but right now developers are scratching their heads thinking about how to explain to store owners in Alabama why it’s cool to keep funds in a Rabby wallet instead of a bank. Right now, the crypto industry's positioning around mass adoption feels completely disconnected. Money transactions — the most common behavior in our lives — shouldn't create such a huge cognitive burden, nor should they take up so much time.
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/11/5529.html
Source: https://medium.com/@long2leaps/on-crypto-mass-adoption-65ef8b20215c
