The Web3 user experience needs to be rethought entirely.

Everyone comes to Web3 from a specific angle. Mine is UX. For the last 4 years, I’ve worked in UX on product teams to grow startups, solve problems with founders, and make the most complicated products intuitive. And so, as I dive further into the Web3 and crypto ecosystem, I can’t help but look at things through this lens. Of course, the transition from Web2 to Web3 offers up a host of exciting new interactions between users, products–and most importantly–communities. But where does its UX fall short? What are some opportunities for founders, investors and anyone at a Web3 startup? Let’s dive in.

Case study: Metamask

In a few cases, products in Web3 have seen their usership explode, but the actual experience of the product remains rudimentary. A perfect example is Metamask. It was initially created for developers as a wallet to build and test Ethereum blockchain applications, but has become the most ubiquitous wallet solution for most applications because of the lack of other reliable options. In my experience, this isn’t a great game plan. If your business edge is that there are no other good options, there’s little to no defensibility - no moat - and that means trouble. Metamask also works on various chains so it’s inaccessibility has become secondary to its utility. It’s now trusted by over 21 million users worldwide. A few of the key ways Metamask fails users are:

• Lack of multi-device compatibility for easy setup on new devices
• Interrupted user flows due to manual wallet connection
• Clunky UI — it does not look and feel like a consumer product
• And, most importantly, a confusing onboarding process. If wallets are the Web3 onramp for new users, Metamask fails to make that a meaningfully nice experience.

Other wallet solutions like Rainbow Wallet have tried addressing some of these problems, but have a long way to go as far as functionality is concerned.

“If your business edge is that there are no other good options, there’s little to no defensibility - no moat - and that means trouble.”

Think about setting up an iPhone or using your Apple wallet to pay for something at Walgreens — None of the issues mentioned above exist, and as a result millions of people use that technology every day. The same needs to be applied to Web3 in order to speed up adoption.

Case study: DAO tooling

Another example of this is the DAO tooling space, where seemingly hundreds of new projects are competing to attract decentralized organizations to use their governance and voting tools. The entire value of a DAO lies in its ability to execute tasks with efficiency and speed, all while giving members a voice through a transparent governance process.

One problem is that the language and vernacular inside DAOs is often ripped straight from that used by solidity developers. Community leads haven’t thought critically about the words they are using to onboard new members and get them actively involved in projects.

Another is that much of the value of DAOs is the fact that red tape and unnecessary hierarchy are removed to create a much more streamlined organizational vehicle. While that may or may not be the case in many of the DAOs that exist today - the tools that these DAOs are using are not making that process easier.

“The absorption rate of users on Web3 platforms is heavily reliant on the ease of use and accessibility of the products that we build.”

The absorption rate of users on Web3 platforms is heavily reliant on the ease of use and accessibility of the products that we build. Useful products are great, but are pointless if they can’t operate at scale. Most participants in the Web3 ecosystem have started to take scale for granted, as if it is a thing that is “just a matter of time.” Scale happens when friction is low and value is high. We still sit at a point on the Web3 adoption timeline where friction and value are both high. In order to remedy this barrier to entry, we need to build platforms that are significantly easier to use and understand.

Another common misconception is that UI = UX. While the UI of many Web3 apps has improved over the last couple of years (cleaner interfaces, more familiar buttons/interactions, etc) how the applications work remains difficult. Platforms may look marginally nicer, but the way in which they work has largely remained the same.

Case Study: Culture, media, and entertainment

The best products delight their customers/users. In fact when we think about it, the earliest innovations in each new wave of technology almost always center around entertainment, gaming, culture, and art. A perfect example of this in Web3 is Dapper Labs. Dapper is building the infrastructure and the products that make Web3 more accessible — and they are doing this for both the front and back-ends. On the front-end, they’ve released projects like Top Shot, UFC, and games like CryptoKitties which became culturally relevant case studies of how Web3 could look and feel natural to non-native participants. These examples prove that successful projects don’t need the technical proficiency proved on the front-end, but that by prioritizing what Kara Weber - COO of Dapper Collective - calls “delight,” the product can be a major success.

On the back-end, these products are built on the Flow blockchain, a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed as the foundation for a new generation of games, apps, and the digital assets that power them. Flow is an initiative to make a more scalable architecture framework that is developer-friendly. This allows for a smoother transition of talent to start building Web3 applications and products — a critical next step for Web3. Flow also prioritizes consumer-friendly onboarding through human rideable security for patent onramps so that users know exactly what authorizations they are making on chain — unlike in Metamask where it’s virtually impossible to know what you’re authorizing each and every time you sign on-chain.

The impact of products like these and ecosystem investors like Dapper Labs may not feel like the next shiny object DeFi protocol in Web3, but players like these will be the enduring success stories of the next decade. In a world where very little is understood by the consumer as to how Web3 works, platforms that make it easier for developers and users will outrun the pack. Dapper is just one example of an ecosystem player that has over-indexed on culture, sports, gaming, and fandom to create great products that are technically proficient in the background.