Opinion: Crypto adoption nears 'crossing the chasm,' but UX falls short

When the user experience fails to keep up with the growth in market adoption, the industry may be at risk of going backwards.

The Federal Reserve says 12 percent of U.S. adults used cryptocurrencies last year. This is actually disappointing news. You might think "great, we are early explorers in this industry", but in fact, for such a technological new thing, 12% market penetration rate is not necessarily good news. This likely means that many people are using a product that is too complex for them.

We can see from the user adoption distribution curve (also known as the crossing the chasm curve) that 12% of people have used cryptocurrencies in the last year alone, which means that we are at the end of the "early adoption" region and are about to face the chasm.

Translator's Note: Geoffrey Moore published the book "Crossing the Chasm" in 1991, and proposed the Chasing the Chasm Curve. The curve is divided into five stages: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Chasm represents the divide between two distinct technology product markets: the first is the early-stage market, dominated by early technology innovators and insiders who quickly realize the benefits of the new technology; the second is the mainstream market, They want to gain the benefits of new technology, but they don't want to "experience" the pain of running into technical details.

Bridging the chasm is what you need to achieve when your product is to reach mainstream adoption. This gap kills too many startups because they overestimate the knowledge, UX acumen, and patience of mainstream consumers. Startups also tend to overestimate the quality of their own products, user experience, and demand for their products. And when you already have experience in using it, it is difficult to understand the repulsion that a novice feels when using these products for the first time.

We are still in such an early stage, why is this not friendly to cryptocurrencies?

Because we're early in the adoption curve, but our product is much earlier in the development curve. Blockchain-based applications have incredible potential, but they are currently too expensive and complicated for most users. When users try a product that isn't ready for them, they often leave it with a negative experience. This negative experience can make users more resistant to trying the product again in the future.

My guess is that those 12% of U.S. adults who use encryption don't have a great user experience.

When startups get adopted much faster than their products can progress along the curve, we have exorbitant valuation bubbles. When this happens across an entire industry rather than just one business, we risk an economic backlash.

For example, when people start using the website, the website itself has many flaws. Some of the earliest e-commerce sites had business hours and only accepted credit card payments over the phone. We saw its potential, but didn't have a great user experience. And the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000 caused many e-commerce products to take longer to cross the chasm.

When you think about it, the Internet has only become ubiquitous in the past decade. And in that crisis, many businesses failed. To put it another way, crossing the chasm cleans up thousands of startups every time. Because entrepreneurs and their first users are not the main body of the market. If we design products for ourselves and people like us, we will never be a successful global product. And that's exactly what the industry is about: to provide useful, mass-scale products and equal opportunity.

When the most easy-to-use products for mainstream users are some CEXs that provide risky tokens, the advantage in the number of early users will cause greater harm to the industry.

What we really need to invest heavily in is not just the usability of DApps, but the tools to interact with these decentralized networks. At this point, we still have a long way to go. Think of the challenges your parents or grandparents might have faced using a digital banking app, and imagine the trouble they would have had trying to securely use Ethereum themselves.

I think success will go to projects that invest heavily in experienced web2 talent who will bring the product and user experience to mainstream users. But so far, most projects have stalled, unable to engage early adopters of complex products and not knowing what to do next.

This is a rare moment when the Ethereum Foundation should probably invest in some internal talent that audits usability across the industry and helps support usability in the ecosystem.

We need to understand more broadly how these products are discovered, accepted and used by mainstream users and make sure that it actually leads to a good user experience. Otherwise, we are only widening the divide.

Written by: Adam Cochran, Partner, Cinneamhain Ventures

Compilation: Aididiao