Cryptocurrency’s disruptive financial value has still not allowed it to escape the reputation of being complicated to use, despite institutional and commercial adoption rising globally. There’s a blueprint for scaling this wall, though. DeFi apps like Venmo and Robinhood were among the first to make online banking and investing accessible to everyone by leveraging intuitive, educational, and community-oriented features incentivizing community-based user behavior to drive growth. This drove scalar adoption and intergenerational user acquisition in Millennial and Gen Z user groups. It made fun and social interactions within apps their standard for money transfers and small-dollar investing, not uncomfortable formal bank visits and FA calls. Doing the same with cryptocurrency and onboarding the next billion users will require similar approaches while capitalizing on novel use cases. Below, I explore ways Web3 fintech companies are breaking the mold and why now may be a watershed Web3 moment in DeFi.
The complexity and intimidation non-crypto users face when engaging with digital finance and crypto/web3 make for a significant adoption problem that hasn’t been solved uniformly across blockchains—the result: an overall low crypto adoption rate within the general public. Traditional platforms have often not been user-friendly, creating a significant barrier to entry for the average person, and hindering the widespread adoption of cryptocurrency. Engagement and trust among potential crypto users toward crypto have also been historically low. The complex nature of traditional crypto platforms set the stage early for a dogged reputation for being inaccessible, or only for the technically savvy, which has continued to slow down mainstream adoption and trust in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Exchanges have been refining their wallets for some time with educational resources and features incentivizing transactions at every level from users at varying levels of sophistication, converting new crypto users into more seasoned ones. Platforms that serve non-crypto users in this same way are collectively an enormous avenue to bridge this significant market gap. Offering simplicity and diversity in their range of intuitive, user-friendly design features, these crypto apps help those new to cryptocurrency learn, buy, use, and invest with minimal stress.
Coinbase is the most obvious example here, given its range of educational tools on ways to use it; buy, hold, trade cryptocurrency, and more. Simplicity in crypto means meeting users where they are, and many still experience difficulty with even Web2 apps and services. Breaking down technical barriers by fostering user-friendly environments can encourage widespread cryptocurrency adoption.
Metamask, the leading Web3 wallet, has an entire site dedicated to teaching crypto newbies about Web3 and how it factors into Metamask as a wallet. The Web3 dApp giant and leading self-custodial wallet, with 30 million monthly active users, takes painstaking measures to ensure that its users have the best understanding possible as to how to use it and leverage it as a tool for dApp creation and cryptocurrency trading with a responsive mobile UI, DEX, and swap services. Teaching novices and specialists alike results in greater usage, more varied data for model training and overall functional rounding for future innovation and development, which drives growth.
Psi Finance takes an innovative approach to spurring crypto adoption by leveraging design. By seamlessly integrating traditional TradFi app features like no-fee asset purchasing and peer-to-peer transfers and payments, they’re bringing cryptocurrency to users in a way they’re already used to banking every day. Blending common banking and payment app features with DeFi functionality like onboarding/off-ramping and native escrow, combined with a social digital wallet for seamless payments might sound like Venmo, MobilePay, and Revolut rolled into one. Still, it’s one app that feels like using everyday banking apps. With an open presale and live tranche, they’re open to engaging at the ground level! A gateway welcoming millions to crypto offering simplicity and user-friendliness as a Web3 bridge from TradFi to DeFi, Psi Finance is targeting a vast, untapped market for entry into a user-centric future of cryptocurrency payments and trading.
Simplifying crypto doesn’t have to be hard, but the number of companies doing it right makes it look that way. Most top wallets like Coinbase, Metamask, andUniswap have educational modules that help users understand how to use them, which is one way. Meeting users where they already are with features they’re used to is another way – leveraging intuitive features to speed adoption. Check out these apps for your crypto needs today!