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The current state of the blockchain UX is simply not good. No matter how much we look at the most used crypto services, we have to conclude that we are not in love with them. Some of them can barely classify as being OK, the rest are simply terrible.

This is the simple truth which is not focused on the cosmetic allure of the products, which also looks from the dial-up era. This truth is referring to how the products work, how the onboarding was presented and most importantly, how they feel to use.

The prolonged bear market however, hasn’t stopped the industry from growing. This begs the question if we’ve reached a state where the market needs something revolutionary in order to grow significantly and attract new types of users and geographies which have not yet been covered.

Everyone involved in the industry wants to see the bear market gone. This however, is probably unlikely to happen until the industry takes into priority the delivering of a better user experience.

Blockchain UX shouldn’t have gotten to this level

The state of the blockchain UX is quietly frankly terrible after a decade. That’s mainly because this industry has been mostly built by engineers and in some cases, freelance executives. This mostly explains why the priority hasn’t been on UX. The first few years were mostly focused on protocols, infrastructure and idealistic approach. Needless to say, this was successful as it resulted in millions of users adopting the first cryptocurrencies and a collective market cap of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The industry has managed to attract a certain type of profile and builders. Mostly brilliant engineers and thinkers who mostly dream and unfortunately sometimes greed. Security and regulation have also held the industry back. It’s incredibly hard to get a product to be easy to use and understand, while at the same time, incredibly secure.

When we’re dealing with financial assets, the priority should always fall on security. That being said, most products are incredibly complex and annoying to deal with. It’s no surprise that builders find that a challenge. Users are also in most cases, tough judges. No one wants to deal with complexities, they want something fast, secure and easy.

With the huge availability of apps for daily use, most people are used to products and apps which work fast and are extremely simple to use. Next year shows a lot of promise when it comes to improving certain areas that will definitely help with UX.

In 2019, technologies which are focused on improving fast payments and settlements will be on the rise. There are no slow technologies in the future and this means faster chains, faster side chains and faster consensus. Builders will be able to focus more on UX layers instead of fixing things, which most users don’t know exist.

Many more specialists will work on the Blockchain UX starting 2019

The industry is also looking that product managers and designers, which are some of the rarest skill sets in the industry. They bring both rationality and elegance. The industry at the moment feels like a cosmic Lego set with instructions written in ancient Egyptian. Developers build and users have to figure out everything. 2019 will start to be abstracted to builders and users so they won’t have to understand how everything works in terms of security and safety.

Developers will additionally focus more on mobile or mobile first app stores which have better set of rules and protocols. The industry itself needs to start believing in its own products more. This year’s DevCon is the largest event for DApps and smart contracts. Ironically enough tickets were paid in fiat and were printed on a plastic badge.

There is no doubt that the Ethereum Foundation has the resources and developers to think of an alternative, but they are simply refusing to use their own products. This points that there is a huge culture shift required for how many organizations think about their own services. The industry will simply not grow until the UX has been set to a priority right below security.

Companies know that now is the time to make that happen and a few will lead by example, thanks to the new talent and organizations with pragmatic use cases. This is because a great user experience isn’t simply about cosmetics, it’s about providing meaning to people who are trying to solve a problem.

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