Web3’s User Experience Sucks! Here’s How It’s Being Fixed

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Imagine if you had have owned a Playstation AND an Nintendo 64 growing up…

We know, we know — mom would have never allowed it (she was telling you to go outside and “touch grass” long before Crypto Twitter was a thing).

But that’s the situation dual users of Ethereum and Solana are finding themselves in, thanks to a classic case of “competition breeding innovation.”

Here’s the timeline:

• Dec 5 ‘23: Coinbase wallet launches shareable crypto payment links, allowing anyone to send/request crypto payments with a web link.

• Jan 26 ‘24: The Ethereum-based Twitter-like social platform Warpcaster launches “Frames,” which pretty much allows folks to code crypto checkouts into their social posts.

• Jun 5 ‘24: Coinbase launches the first Ethereum-based “smart wallet,” allowing users to sign up/in to their wallet with FaceID or a Google account (no 12-word seed phrase needed).

• Jun 12 ‘24: Fuse, the Solana-based smart wallet launches.

• Jun 25 ‘24: Solana launches ‘Blinks’ (aka: blockchain links) which is kind of like a combination of Coinbase payment links and Warpcaster’s Frames, where users can embed crypto interactions into a single link (think: voting, donating, minting NFTs, swapping tokens, and paying people) and share them anywhere online.

Here are our two big takeaways:

1. Competition between these two ecosystems breeds painful/tired tribalism, yes…

   But for those who are able to quit the silly game of ‘one or the other, not both’ — this competition is bringing awesome new features at a break-neck pace.

2. Both ecosystems are doing something that the crypto space has desperately needed in order to scale:

   Bridge the gap between web2 and web3.

   These seamless sign up/in and purchase interactions are something web users are used to, and they’re not going to abandon that for a worse user experience.

   By meeting consumers where they are, it makes for an easier transition.

We give these developments two emphatic thumbs up, four chefs kisses, and eight molto bene’s.