In an industry where price swings are a typical everyday event and million-dollar hacks happen more than in other markets, I believe it goes without saying that improving users’ knowledge through education is the first and most important thing. We need to focus on building an educated ecosystem to help users realize the real use cases of blockchain and crypto and learn about the safe ways to use them.
At the moment, the majority of the space is interested in speculation, simply cashing in and cashing out. They follow a similar pattern: they test different crypto apps and try to benefit from the high price swings. And the sad part is they don’t usually succeed and end up on the losing side.
Take TrustWallet for instance; the number of downloads has increased significantly for the past 2 years which is an indication of rising adoption. But even with this upsurge, many users still don’t have a clear understanding of custodian and non-custodian wallets and the great impact they have on the security of their assets.
We have a long way ahead, but maybe dropping buzzwords and explaining the terms to users would be a great start for the space.
We Need Stable Infrastructure Before Delivering More Seamless Experience
With the growing number of users within the space, the cash flow is increasing naturally as well. Providing a seamless payment system is one way to approach this change which requires a notable capacity in terms of the number of transactions per second. The number should indeed be higher than that of traditional systems, like Visa because otherwise, we’re not really competing with the conventional platforms, even though we’re promoting the space as such.
For Ethereum, we still have to wait for Sharding to come to reach the capability we’re looking for. Additionally, other layer-2 solutions have failed (some catastrophically) to really relieve the pain points we’re experiencing today.
One thing that we really need to consider is that a faulty platform can cause users to lose interest and trust in the whole space and once that happens, there is not much we can do to gain their trust back again. Considering this, we need a more stable infrastructure before providing more seamless and user-friendly options which will lead to more adoption.
Crypto is New: We Still Need the Old Players
The crypto space is quite new and we still need fiat currencies to at least enter the market. For that, we have to rely on traditional players like Visa or Mastercard so users are at least able to buy digital assets. The same rule applies to withdrawals; our bank accounts are a necessity if we’re planning to change crypto to fiat currencies like the US dollar or British Pound.
To utilize the full benefits of blockchain technology, we don’t need to necessarily replace the current financial system with cryptocurrencies, but rather we can simply integrate one with the other. A good solution is one where users don’t concern themselves with the backend and can simply enjoy secure, cheap, fast, and borderless transactions.
For this, crypto and traditional finance have to come together and complement one another so customers can enjoy the benefits of both systems.
