"Crypto will never reach mass adoption if it does not before more user-friendly"

[NotATether]

Cross-post from r/Cryptocurrency on reddit (I did not write this):

Is it so difficult for crypto developers to create a UI or anything that would make crypto easier/ more accessible to people.

I am more than 2 years into crypto, but navigating crypto is still difficult even for me:

every transaction is a thrill: Long human-unreadable address, prone for errors, set up gas fee on your own, slow transaction speed

if your transaction got stuck (ETH), only the more experienced crypto users know how to cancel the transaction

bridging one coin/token to another chain can be confusing

blindly approving MetaMask prompts can make you approve malicious smart contracts you're not aware of

revoking smart contracts, most people aren't even aware of this

cold, hot, paper wallets...people don't even understand what a wallet is...custodial wallets are way easier, so too many people fall for it and don't do self-custody

coin VS token, so many people don't even understand the difference

tokens on several chains for example USDT on ETH, on TRON, on BSC, ...some people who just want to send stablecoins to friends and family are confused how to send their funds

confusing crypto ticker names that looks quite similar

As long crypto doesn't get easier, it won't reach mass adoption.

The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.


Wanted to put r/Cryptocurrency in the title but I ran out of title space.

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[Solosanz]

Bitcoin is hard too.

People still don't know if legacy, segwit and native segwit addresses are compatible with each other.

You could be a target of dusk attack and not many people know how to not spend the dust transactions.

Not many people aware of lightning network and how to open a channel.

Not many people know what is CPFP, RBF and sat/byte.

After all either Bitcoin or altcoins are hard to understand if people don't want to spend few hours everyday to learn about it.

[Zaguru12]

This are just Alticoins difficulties and not related to bitcoin at all. The only thing related bitcoin is how to get a good self custodian wallets and this also wouldn’t be much of a problem if many people become involved into bitcoin, at least if people could suggest banks or distinguish between mortgage and regular banks to each other in fiat systems, then the more bitcoin spreads the more the knowledge of better wallets will also spread.

As for issues concerning bumping transactions or canceling them this also isn’t a big problem. Just like it was stated internet has become easy but it wasn’t so in the early stages, so once people get involved they will learn mostly through experience. If Grandma can today navigate between social media platforms then this also would not be hard.

Lastly all these are still not known because of lack of its  awareness once the government becomes its user friendly then there will even be public awareness schemes that would just address this problems.

So to me it is not a problem at all if only you’re holding bitcoin and not involved in Altcoins or even trading.

[rat03gopoh]

Of course, all conveniences are in all centralized services, all features have been provided perfectly so that you're more complacent. On the other hand, there are regular fees that are stifling because they're not basically free.
Crypto educates people to start thinking technically, more carefully and slowly before executing transactions. You can get all of this for free which won't be given in formal schools.

[Z-tight]

Most of the content from this crosspost is about altcoins, and this section is for only BTC discussion, so we have to look at it on the side of BTC. Security, privacy, pseudonymity would always come above convenience in the BTC network. Centralized exchanges helps their users hold their keys, it is convenient but unsafe, backing up seed phrases to the cloud, or just saving it anywhere online is convenient, but unsafe, storing all your BTC in an online wallet is convenient, but unsafe, etc. People must understand that controlling their money themselves should take some of their time to learn how to do it well, but BTC will reach mass adoption without compromising its decentralization or security for it.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

Is it so difficult for crypto developers to create a UI or anything that would make crypto easier/ more accessible to people.
The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

"Now even grandma can surft the net". Yea only because all '00 grandmas are dead... 20 years have passed. I remember teaching my grandmother about 20 years ago how to use a mobile phone (old phone, without internet, just sms and calling options). It took me weeks of patiently trying and asking what she remember every time we saw each other. Unfortunately no success. Unfortunately, it happens that before the old generation learns a new technology, they leave this world faster if they are interested in learning at all, because they usually stop chasing the new technologies and focus on relationships.

I agree that crypto needs to be simpler for average user, but its not like every todays grandma needs to know how to use it.

[Poker Player]

Is it so difficult for crypto developers to create a UI or anything that would make crypto easier/ more accessible to people.
The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

There is a part of reason in this. If Bitcoin were to one day be used with the same adoption that the internet and cell phones are used today, there should be very user friendly applications, but I don't think it will ever be used with that level of adoption because of how valuable it is. Most likely it will be CBDCs or some shitcoins that everyone will use on their mobile, while Bitcoin will tend to be treasured more as something valuable. Even with highly developed LN or other solutions it doesn't make much sense to spend Bitcoin and store dollars or CBDCs, rather the trend will be the opposite.

[NotATether]

People still don't know if legacy, segwit and native segwit addresses are compatible with each other.

They are, but silly outdated exchange software is not updated with Segwit BECH32 address recognizer even in 2023, which causes sending to these addresses fail. Otherwise native segwit would have been the golden standard a long time ago.

Personally I do not implement P2WPKH-P2SH ("3") address support at all, just native segwit, and legacy addresses for people stuck using outdated software. Taproot support is also questionable and it's only really useful if you are making scripts. Otherwise it is not much different from native segwit. Of course, support for sending to all of those addresses are important (and only involves implementing Base58 and Bech32 decoding - which would already be present if you are supporting legacy + native segwit), it's just the wallet generation part where you can safely stick with legacy and native segwit, like Electrum.

You could be a target of dusk attack and not many people know how to not spend the dust transactions.

Fair enough. But if I were to receive dust, I would just burn it up in the (mining) atmosphere.

Not many people aware of lightning network and how to open a channel.

Also valid, though in my OP I was referring to Layer 1.

Not many people know what is CPFP, RBF and sat/byte.

Arguably they shouldn't have to, that is the job of the wallet software to handle. All users need to know, are fee priorities "High" "Medium" and "Low", which the software automatically chooses the appropriate sat/byte value depending on network conditions, and "Refund" which is just a double spend using RBF (which is on the brink of being enabled globally for the entire network anyway).

After all either Bitcoin or altcoins are hard to understand if people don't want to spend few hours everyday to learn about it.

All people should have to learn is: "How does bitcoin (the network) work" and "how to use a bitcoin wallet". They shouldn't have to read Mastering Bitcoin if they don't want to.

Most altcoins though have brought their complexity onto themselves, with all this "token", "bridge", "web3" gibberish.

Is it so difficult for crypto developers to create a UI or anything that would make crypto easier/ more accessible to people.
The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

There is a part of reason in this. If Bitcoin were to one day be used with the same adoption that the internet and cell phones are used today, there should be very user friendly applications, but I don't think it will ever be used with that level of adoption because of how valuable it is. Most likely it will be CBDCs or some shitcoins that everyone will use on their mobile, while Bitcoin will tend to be treasured more as something valuable. Even with highly developed LN or other solutions it doesn't make much sense to spend Bitcoin and store dollars or CBDCs, rather the trend will be the opposite.

I disagree about shitcoins, I don't see anyone using something like $PEPE as cash material. Or even DOGE which has not received an update to its full node for an entire year.

CDBCs are more concerning, but then again it will probably just be implemented as another way for your banks, Paypal and co. to store your money. In other words, people don't actually have to learn how to use the CDBC because their financial apps stay the same, it's just the banks being forced to adapt to that. That's how I believe people will eventually be made to use CDBCs.

[Hyphen(-)]

Bitcoin is hard too.

People still don't know if legacy, segwit and native segwit addresses are compatible with each other.

You could be a target of dusk attack and not many people know how to not spend the dust transactions.

Not many people aware of lightning network and how to open a channel.

Not many people know what is CPFP, RBF and sat/byte.

After all either Bitcoin or altcoins are hard to understand if people don't want to spend few hours everyday to learn about it.

This is correct; I believed the same thing. Many people wanted to know how to purchase and sell Bitcoin so that they could do so whenever they wished. That is why some people prefer to use centralized exchanges because they make buying and selling easier than peer-to-peer transactions, which can be difficult to see depending on your location.

Gaining information about everything you said is beneficial, but not everyone has the time to learn everything, and it is not vital for them to know everything before purchasing Bitcoin.

Most of the content from this crosspost is about altcoins, and this section is for only BTC discussion, so we have to look at it on the side of BTC. Security, privacy, pseudonymity would always come above convenience in the BTC network. Centralized exchanges helps their users hold their keys, it is convenient but unsafe, backing up seed phrases to the cloud, or just saving it anywhere online is convenient, but unsafe, storing all your BTC in an online wallet is convenient, but unsafe, etc. People must understand that controlling their money themselves should take some of their time to learn how to do it well, but BTC will reach mass adoption without compromising its decentralization or security for it.

When the security of centralized exchanges was compromised, many with limited information assumed that Bitcoin or cryptocurrency was a hoax and would not see widespread adoption.

I believe that individuals need to get more understanding in order to distinguish between centralized and decentralized exchanges and to cease generalizing centralized exchange flaws to Bitcoin in general.

[ancafe]

The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.

If grandma can surf the internet why can't grandpa understand crypto more easily. Wouldn't if the features introduced in ETH and Altcoins were complicated, BTC's opportunities would be much better and to be honest, the difficulties also collectively come in bitcoin. Of course this is a problem for older people and it is very difficult for them to understand how ETH and other altcoins work, but if there is an easier way then it is worth considering, so far is there any way to simplify it and the answer is probably no.

As long as education is not carried out properly, it is possible that awareness to understand will still be quite difficult, especially when it comes to age, some people do not understand the internet and technology. I feel this when I see the closest people and they never even know what exchanges, wallets, bitcoins and altcoins are, of course it is very difficult to achieve this adoption to parents because there are many things that must be taught to them.

[rby]

The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.

If grandma can surf the internet why can't grandpa understand crypto more easily. Wouldn't if the features introduced in ETH and Altcoins were complicated, BTC's opportunities would be much better and to be honest, the difficulties also collectively come in bitcoin. Of course this is a problem for older people and it is very difficult for them to understand how ETH and other altcoins work, but if there is an easier way then it is worth considering, so far is there any way to simplify it and the answer is probably no.

The difficulty is not only associated with altcoins. Bitcoin is not easy also to learn about the technical parts. Grandpa could be a busy man who doesn't have the time to study what will disturb his old brain.
Not so many people will struggle to make money and also struggle to learn how to save their money. That is why many resorted to fiat and the banking system.

I know that as time goes on many things would be made user friendly. I remember when you need to run the whole blockchain in your computer in order to participate in bitcoin. But today the server can easily be reached by the wallet software developers and we can easily interact with blockchain through a simple application.
Bitcoin will eventually hit mass adoption and things will become less complicated with them.

[crwth]

Those kinds of features are just like how people make it look like it's the more "fascinating" one instead of just having the precise feature that you need. It's to make it look more buffed and better, but in reality, it's not being used. A lot of it is, not just in cryptocurrencies but also in just software in your computer and not being maximized to its full potential.

We really need more education for those interested in crypto.

[kryptqnick]

Ethereum isn't very user-friendly, but that doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. I mean, sure, giving cash to someone is easier and there are many people that find anything else difficult. But making a BTC transaction in Electrum is not more difficult for me than making a bank transfer. In both cases you deal with numbers and symbols, and with a bank transfer it can even be harder if it's an international payment or official transfer to a bank account (where you need to enter tons of data before you're done). There's an issue of responsibility that you have if you make a mistake, and there can be issues with transaction speed.

But if someone wants a faster and more familiar way, they can use a centralized service. From what I've seen in videos, it seems there are services that are very user-friendly, as long as you're okay with custodial storage, and since these people seem to be okay with banks, they're probably fine with that as well. So the user-friendly way exists as well, I believe. And it's not like non-custodial wallets are hard to figure out.

[Onset]

They’re looking for user friendly, but do they know what they’re talking about?!

I’d like them to explain how this’d work without losing functionality. The simplest UI we can have is a send/receive button with extremely basic transaction history information and balance. Show fees in USD only. If the user needs to receive BTC, they’ll need to have a single Bitcoin address that never changes. They’ll need to have no change addresses. This is the most basic you can get. And I agree, this kind of UI would attract more than Electrum orBitcoin Core.

But what do you do then? As soon as the user learns fees are actually fixed in sats, not in USD, they’ll be confused. As soon as they’ll learn their behavior of using a single address for all transactions is wrong, they’ll be confused and mad. You can’t lose functionality to win new users. Either they roll with us or they remain stuck in the fiat system where they are. The most fascinating part of Bitcoin is where you realize you have free will for your money, why lose this feeling because at that point the “simple UI” will be no different to a classic banking app..

[ImThour]

Everything takes time and I am sure Crypto will need it too. It took millions of pages of data to make GPT Model that provided ChatGPT and its adoption was so fast all around the world.
However, the actual time that it took to become that good was since the release of the Internet. It took several years to generate this information and provide it.

The only problem I have with the current state of Crypto developers is that they are busy making stuff for bucks, not for the technology. They are not willing to make a huge change in the world with their contributions.

[Taskford]

Cross-post from
The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.


Wanted to put r/Cryptocurrency in the title but I ran out of title space.

Crypto will be hard to learn if the person is not really interested about technology or they are not prepared to read long informations about cryptocurrency since they want to shortcut because there expectation to earn quick money on it is so high.. Also its normal for people to find something difficult especially when they don't know anything about it. Its just they can learn depends on how eager they are to gather helpful information so that they can adopt cryptocurrency and its technicalities.

[DaveF]

What I don't think many people grasp is the time involved new technologies to be adopted. Go back to in the 90s when the Internet was catching on everybody thought it was this great new thing. But it really came into existence in early 1983. And before that for decades you had people dialing in through modems too other systems.

This is about money camera this is about financial independence.

So now take a look at it from that perspective, credit cards came along in the 1950s and it was still 30 plus years before they became ubiquitous for use in our society. I even remember back in the mid to late 80s where many places did not accept credit cards it was cash or check only. When online banking became a thing it still took a while for people to really accept Titus. And now there are a lot of banks that you could only deal with online. It does not have to become more user friendly, between all the web wallets and other wallets that make it incredibly simple to buy and sell crypto. It just has to hit that tipping point of use where it's everywhere.

I am not a fan of square and their wallet and the entire cash app thing. Let me make that clear. But if they ever get off their ass and fulfill their promise of every one of their terminals taking cryptocurrency payments you're going to see usage and adoption goes through the roof. Because this might be in New York centric thing, I see their terminals everywhere in small businesses.

-Dave

[hatshepsut93]

I think the existing wallets like Electrum are already quite user-friendly, but the protocol itself is fundamentally unfriendly and there's nothing that can be done to change it. There is no room for error - lost password/wallet file/seed means all coins are lost, wrong address means coins are lost, etc. With fees people without experience can either encounter stuck transactions or overpay on fees. Wallet interfaces help communicate this to the users, but still a lot of people don't pay attention.

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

It's true that when the internet came into existence it was difficult to use, but as time goes on and many people got involve to learn & understand how it works & how to use it effortlessly so did it become more easier base on it's mass adoption & common general usage, and likewise is that also applicable to Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, because the more people get to understand how it works and how to use it, so is it likely to be possible for even both grandma & grandpa to be able to use Bitcoin effortlessly to send, receive USDT & Btc with the less cheapest network & non-custodial wallets (Trc20 & Segwit Btc Electrum wallet). Only if we could have someone to explained it to the best of their ability.

[YUriy1991]

Cross-post from r/Cryptocurrency on reddit (I did not write this):

Is it so difficult for crypto developers to create a UI or anything that would make crypto easier/ more accessible to people.

I am more than 2 years into crypto, but navigating crypto is still difficult even for me:

every transaction is a thrill: Long human-unreadable address, prone for errors, set up gas fee on your own, slow transaction speed

if your transaction got stuck (ETH), only the more experienced crypto users know how to cancel the transaction

bridging one coin/token to another chain can be confusing

blindly approving MetaMask prompts can make you approve malicious smart contracts you're not aware of

revoking smart contracts, most people aren't even aware of this

cold, hot, paper wallets...people don't even understand what a wallet is...custodial wallets are way easier, so too many people fall for it and don't do self-custody

coin VS token, so many people don't even understand the difference

tokens on several chains for example USDT on ETH, on TRON, on BSC, ...some people who just want to send stablecoins to friends and family are confused how to send their funds

confusing crypto ticker names that looks quite similar

As long crypto doesn't get easier, it won't reach mass adoption.

The internet was "difficult" once...but now even grandma can surf the net. When crypto will be easy enough gor grandpa and grandma, mass adoption is in.

The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.


Wanted to put r/Cryptocurrency in the title but I ran out of title space.

There is an implicit message in your post and what you want to convey is to prioritize user experience over speculative gains and ensure crypto becomes a technology that empowers and benefits everyone. I strongly agree.

Of course, with efforts to simplify transaction procedures, remove confusing jargon, and improve security measures and bring crypto into the hands of everyday users for mass adoption.