Disclosure: The opinions shared here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of crypto.news’ editorial team.
We are failing. Despite all the discussions about sovereignty, decentralization, and web3 revolutions, the hard truth is that the crypto industry has not made significant inroads into daily life. We’ve constructed intricate castles in the clouds—protocols and networks of stunning beauty and sophistication—only to find that no one outside our Ivory Tower wants to inhabit them. The “next billion users” aren’t arriving, not due to a lack of interest in decentralization, but because we’ve made it nearly impossible for them to participate. We proclaim empowerment and freedom but instead deliver friction and exclusivity.
Summary
- Crypto risks becoming irrelevant by catering to engineers rather than everyday users, obscuring its promise of financial freedom with jargon, complexity, and fragmented interfaces.
- Mass adoption has stagnated at around 5% global ownership due to intimidating onboarding processes, from seed phrases to unpredictable gas fees and failed transactions.
- In consumer tech, user experience is paramount—and with today’s attention spans, crypto apps must match the seamlessness of Apple Pay, Venmo, or Revolut to compete.
- The future of DeFi belongs to platforms that design vertically—integrating deeply with human needs—instead of endlessly multiplying chains, tokens, and protocols for insiders.
Crypto has become a reflection of its own obsessions. Layer-2s expand, chains fork, and tokenomics changes, yet the average person finds crypto daunting, obscure, or simply unusable. While the world craves better financial tools—offering quicker remittances, stable savings, and cross-border payments—we’re creating complexities for ourselves. If we don’t refocus on building for humans rather than just tech engineers, hackers, and developers, we risk becoming the QWERTY Blackberry of finance: innovative, principled, and ultimately irrelevant.
Crypto could easily face a fate similar to that of QWERTY smartphones if we don’t simplify user experience. Envision a new user attempting to navigate the crypto landscape for the first time. They may have to download a wallet, choose between custodial and non-custodial options, understand the differences between L1s and L2s, how to bridge assets (likely losing time and money in the process), pay unpredictable gas fees in native tokens they may not yet possess, and figure out why a transaction failed, what Etherscan is, and how to utilize it, among other challenges.
It’s a user experience nightmare wrapped in a confusing language barrier, presented through platforms that resemble developer sandboxes rather than consumer-ready products. There is a fundamental contradiction within web3. On one side, it claims to democratize finance and empower individuals. On the other, it expects those same individuals to navigate seed phrases, slippage tolerance, RPC endpoints, gas fees, and multi-sig governance.
Mass adoption is not happening
Research estimates suggest that approximately 5% of the global population owns cryptocurrencies. For those, crypto’s promise of redefining money, ownership, and trust has been realized. However, most of these owners are developers, tech enthusiasts, and early adopters. A decade into its journey, we must confront the uncomfortable reality: crypto has not successfully brought ordinary people onboard.
Mass adoption has been claimed many times—from the ICO boom of 2017 to DeFi summer of 2020, from memecoins to AI agents and artificial intelligence overall, from stablecoins to compliance and regulation—but crypto is still unprepared for it. Why? The industry is insular; it builds and thrives for itself.
Complexity as a barrier
We live in an era where TikTok dominates our attention. The average attention span of internet users hovers around 7 to 15 seconds. Data indicates that for the typical app, only about one-third of users return within 24 hours of first use, and that percentage plummets to 10-15%. This is in reference to common apps with intuitive navigation and usability. Crypto apps often present users with a blank wallet and no clear next step. You’re left to figure out how to fund, secure, and comprehend what you’ve just signed.
This disparity constitutes a strategic failure. In consumer technology, the product with superior user experience usually prevails, not the one steeped in ideology. Meanwhile, the global demand for accessible financial tools is soaring. In many regions, inflation is eroding savings, and remittance fees are still exploitative. Even the so-called ‘safe haven’ of global finance, the U.S. dollar, is experiencing the worst results since 1973, having dropped over 10% in value. Crypto could provide a lifeline. However, that lifeline is ensnared in jargon and incompatible wallets.
Web3 prides itself on sovereignty: users control their keys, their data, and their destiny. Nevertheless, sovereignty without usability turns into a form of tyranny. Expecting ordinary users to shoulder the entire burden of security and understanding—with no margin for error—is not empowerment.
Contrast this with the user experience of Apple Pay, Venmo, Revolut, or any other web2 alternative. The interfaces are streamlined, the onboarding takes mere seconds, and risk is mitigated through account recovery and biometric authentication. It’s not that users are indifferent to security; they simply need usability.
Crypto won’t have a second chance at mass adoption. The next billion users won’t arrive because tech advances or token prices rise. They’ll come when the products are easier, faster, and safer—and significantly better than existing options.
The irony is that crypto possesses the infrastructure to deliver remarkable financial freedom. Yet without a fundamental shift toward user-centered design, that freedom will remain inaccessible behind interfaces that only early adopters can decipher. Ultimately, it’s not the code or consensus mechanism that dictates adoption; it’s the user experience.
Designing for simplicity in web3
Simplifying UX in crypto isn’t about stripping away essential features of decentralized finance; it’s about managing that complexity wisely. Ultimately, the platform that emerges victorious won’t have the best tokenomics or deepest protocol integrations but will be the one that makes crypto feel effortless without demanding users relinquish control or security.
Crypto is overflowing with innovation. However, most of those innovations are horizontal: new chains, new L2s, new tokens, new DeFi protocols, etc., rather than vertical, meaning deeper integration with human needs. This points to a more profound issue: crypto builders often create for each other instead of the individuals they claim to serve. The design language, developer-centric documentation, and fragmented UI pathways reinforce the notion that crypto isn’t a product; it’s a puzzle.
There are billions of users eager for empowerment through decentralized finance; let’s ready crypto for them.
