UI And UX Is Crypto’s Most Pressing Challenge

Although crypto is often said to be an emerging technology, that is no longer the case. The crypto industry has been around for over a decade and is therefore well past its infancy, and yet it still hasn’t gotten anywhere close to achieving mainstream adoption.

Crypto advocates have suggested numerous reasons behind crypto’s failure to become more broadly adopted, citing the need for a killer use case, a lack of education, and so on. However, it’s undeniable that one of the key challenges lies in crypto’s accessibility, which is primarily defined by its UI and UX.

What is UI and UX?

UI and UX are vital elements of every application we use today. Whether it’s deciding where to shop online, which app market to use, or even the movies we watch online, the UI and UX will play a big role in our decisions of which platform to use.

UI is short for user interface and refers to the graphical layout of an app. UX is short for user experience and refers to the overall ease of using an application or service. As such, UI and UX go hand-in-hand, as they shape our choices in which products and services we use daily.

If an application’s UI is overly complicated or confusing, it results in a poor UX. And if an app doesn’t offer a great UX, it can quickly cause users to get frustrated and give up. This is one of crypto’s major problems, and its future adoption will likely be dependent on the creation of a world-class UI.

Crypto’s Confusing Complexity

But the current state of play is that UI and UX are often an afterthought in the crypto world. There are countless stories of people showing an interest in crypto and wanting to get on board, only to try a range of applications and come to the conclusion that it’s too difficult.

The average crypto exchange app showcases an overwhelming amount of information, with tons of seemingly random charts, countless numbers, obscure percentages, and abbreviations that often make it difficult for users to know what token they’re buying.

This poor UI and UX adds to the already very complex fundamentals of crypto, such as private keys, public keys, volatility, DeFi, liquidity pools, staking, gas fees, tokenization, and so on. The crypto industry cannot expect to achieve mainstream adoption if it requires billions of people to learn what all of these things are.

In the crypto industry, product designers have done a good job of translating the needs of their respective organizations into working applications, but very few have focused on creating an effortless UX. While some have tried, their efforts simply cannot be compared to the experience of downloading a popular app such as Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, WhatsApp and so on.

These Web2 companies have honed their UI and UX to accommodate users from every corner of the globe, regardless of their unique cultural tastes and preferences. Someone might have no idea of how a “Story” works on Facebook, or how to send a photo on WhatsApp, but when they pick up the app they will almost always figure it out within a few seconds at the most. The UX has become so incredibly simple and smooth that the most popular apps can keep users glued to their mobile phones for hours on end. Some aspects of application design work so well that they have even become ingrained into our culture, such as Tinder’s “swipe left or swipe right.”

Compare that to crypto and it’s clear that there’s still much work to be done. It’s probably impossible for crypto and Web3 to be hyped even more than it is already, and every crypto native dreams of digital assets becoming the world's primary financial tools, but until the UI and UX can support that, it’s not going to happen.

Crypto needs superior design strategies. After all, even now, there are millions of people who still struggle to do basic tasks such as sending an email on their smartphone or computer. Crypto needs to design a UI and UX with these legions of users in mind. It needs to follow in the footsteps of companies like Apple, which, whether you love it or hate it, has done a fantastic job of streamlining the user experience through its ecosystem of apps and services. While there are still some hiccups with the iPhone’s UX, the overall experience is quite seamless and it works just fine for the majority of users.

Increasing Accessibility

In crypto, one of the most complex kinds of platforms of all is the decentralized exchange. DEXs are superior to centralized exchanges in many ways, as they generally list far more tokens, and they enable users to “stake” tokens, provide liquidity, lend and borrow crypto, and engage in yield farming activities to earn a passive income. Yet these platforms are overwhelmingly difficult to master with their complex UIs, to the extent that even many crypto natives will struggle to navigate them.

This is changing though, with platforms such as MANTRA putting much more focus on the overall UX. They are set to launch its DEX later this year, and one of its main goals is to make tokenized assets more accessible to the masses. To that end, it is dedicating much of its resources towards building a clean, strong and intuitive UI in order to provide a streamlined UX that can cater to users of all levels. The design of its DEX platform is influenced by some of the easiest to use CEX platforms, such as Binance and Coinbase, which have made good progress in creating a simpler trading experience for novice users.

Strike is doing something similar in the area of crypto payments, and although its app’s visuals might be considered somewhat bland compared to its peers, it has been undeniably successful. The app has enjoyed great success in El Salvador, which famously became the first country in the world to fully legalize Bitcoin, legislating that every business must accept it as a payment mechanism. With its clean UI, Strike enables such a smooth and simple UX that it has emerged as one of that country’s most popular Bitcoin payment applications. It caters to many of the less fortunate communities in El Salvador, and its success is proof positive that it can be used by those with only limited knowledge of how crypto works.

UI & UX Must Be A Priority

Most crypto startups see themselves as building the foundations of a Web3 movement that will eventually transform the world and its financial ecosystem into a more equitable and accessible place that everyone can participate in. But for them to achieve this vision, they need to devote more resources towards creating a simplified UI and UX that can facilitate the mass adoption of their products and services.

It’s not enough to just rely on the promised benefits of crypto. If the industry is to go mainstream, it’s going to have to put much more emphasis on the user experience. Make crypto accessible and mass adoption will come.