User Experience in Web3 Jacob Oliver mod; Roger Brogan Chainlink Labs; Ahmed Al Balaghi Biconomy; Ni

yes i saw it very tired um are we holding up all right come on i can get a little more enthusiasm than that on a saturday night there we go welcome to the panel i'm jacob oliver i'm the u.s editor at crypto briefing uh and i'm here to moderate a panel on uh user experience of web3 with me i have uh ahmed al-balagi uh the co-founder of bikonomy how are you doing um roger brogan director of solutions architecture at chain link labs kayla croot uh co-founder and creative director at coin network and nikola vukovic d5 saver front and lead dev how is everyone doing tonight doing great wonderful doing good same as used to yeah i'm just hanging in there hanging in there uh sometimes we have mics for all panelists but we're sharing tonight um okay so um i had some communication with a few of you uh leading up to this panel to kind of craft the questions because i didn't want to catch anybody too off guard so i'm going to start with a question sort of posed by roger you mentioned in our communications that user experience goes way beyond just the ui right and it deals with this whole process of interacting with d5 protocols fiat on-ramps transaction fees managing various wallets gas fees to start us off what's the path towards smoothing this whole overall experience what does that path look like and where would you say we're on that path today yeah that's that's a great question i think that you know the eventual goal here is mass adoption and to get to mass adoption you're going to need to smooth this process out i think everyone can agree that where we are in the process right now is it's not so smooth right i mean there's lots of barriers for improvement you know fiat on ramps setting up your metamask wallet understanding private keys what is your seed phrase what do you mean i can't reset my password who do i call for tech support i lost my private key like sorry so those types of things you know custodial solutions is all of that stuff that even leads up to then the ui itself right i think a lot of a lot of the protocols you know built by engineers they focus on making it work not necessarily making it pretty eyes an engineer you know you can see some of the stuff i make it's not going to be pretty it's going to work but you know i leave that to the people that are experts in making it pretty so i think that you know it's just human nature if you don't give something better faster easier or simpler they're not going to adopt it right that's my opinion so building on that a little bit a lot of people we we all believe we're here because decentralization is critical right everybody in this room knows that everybody else doesn't necessarily like d5 is a scary word nfts are a scary word um and unless we make this easy enough to like people don't even know that they're using blockchain or decentralized media or d5 or any of that like if you don't know is the only way to get like my mom to use it um and so it has to be as easy or in my opinion easier than all of the web 2 solutions and then the things like transparency and your data privacy and your rights to own like things you post on the internet what like those are cherries on top of the sundae for all of the people who aren't in this room already yeah just to add like how i see where we are now um and essentially at bike on what we're sort of building for like i feel like we're like right now the whole space comprised of a couple million people like maybe a couple million active users represents what zero point something percent in the world um and it's about sort of building for the 99 right and essentially that's at least for what we're doing is how we are building tools for for the 99 um so yeah i see that we're still at that stage where you know we're we're not we haven't even hit more than one percent of the population right in terms of um in terms of adoption so it's that early right i mean everybody has valid points here i think it's also but it's definitely education and it's time that it's going to take it's going to get us there just like the internet is like maybe 30 years ago right but also as uh i think kayla said uh we got to make the like the the right choice or at least what we we're pretty sure is the right choice like the centralization and all this technology that we're building we have to make it the easy choice as well because like no one else is nobody's going to use it if they don't like we just have to yeah cool um hang on to the mic because the next question is yours actually um when we were emailing each other uh you uh mentioned uh that building a product like uh defy saver means uh this is a quote making a very complex and layered technical and uh very excuse me a very complex and layered technical and financial product as accessible as possible that includes providing as much information as possible while not overwhelming the users so my question is what kinds of information or what information is necessary for the users what do they need to know up front and what kind of information is better kept not made not inaccessible certainly but maybe reserved for more advanced users and sort of placed on people at a place where they can seek it out right how can you tell the difference yeah that's definitely what we've been trying to figure out for the past three or four years where are you at um i think we're doing um hopefully a decent enough job um we're just at a point like a lot of the users are still very technical um we're we're sort of optimizing for them still at this point because we're in d5 which is like already um very complex and layered and then like trying to like um build a product that's even more layered on top of that it's just like you're gonna get this very technical um sort of end user and i think that's the type of user that actually wants to learn and they want to like figure out how everything works so that's that's what i sort of meant by letting them know what's going on behind the scenes so like very often we try to not abstract a lot of the things that some other apps might abstract away we use some technical terms we try to explain them as best possible and we try to sort of ease the user into it but i think it's very important to like let the user have a um an opportunity to like learn more about the technologies that's sort of um behind the scenes yeah that that's how we think about it at least awesome i'd be curious to hear how the rest of the panel thinks about as well kayla you seem like you so i totally understand where you are and your market segment and and the audience that you have and that i think works probably well for your consumer um kind of what roger was saying is like the end goal for us is mass adoption like without mass adoption you know we're not all gonna make it um and so part of that is making like accessibility for everybody using like the right language you know nft you know i didn't know what fungible was the word fungible meant until you know a few years ago and really allowing everybody to get on board with that um so my co-founder al morris uh founded a company before this called we teach blockchain.org and so sort of splitting that like educational section or like that educational like let's learn about what all these things are and how to interact with it with like your product like connecting those dots like saying oh if you don't know what this is like go learn about it like here's a really good way to do that i think is really important but also like making it easy enough that if like if you don't know it doesn't matter like if you want to mint an nft um like it should be as easy as uploading to facebook or twitter and like just letting it go and not having to know all of the technical behind the scenes i agree completely like i think the key for us at least what we've been trying to do is like make it so that the user doesn't have to know anything so we don't want to like make them we don't want to cater to developers obviously but like we're just trying to find a good balance between like having the user like interact with it like it's a web 2 app and like letting them actually feel the technology behind it because it is very cool right also any other comments on this particular question like what sort of uh information do you guys feel like users like have to have up front yeah so i mean for us we actually like in the one aspect that we've really focused on is gas abstraction by economy so at the moment we work with over 80 daps and have powered over 15 million gases transactions where developers are sponsoring the gas fees on behalf of end users and um this is like a huge layer that we could like you know that a lot of developers like are just so excited about abstracting way because all you all the end user has to do is just click a sign button and that's it instead of having to do like two different like additional steps and even like a financial decision as well and for us our thesis is that if gas fees doesn't sort of come down over the long term then what then would not kind of make it to kayla's point um so for us like our thesis because gas users come down eventually at a web 2 developers come to f3 they'll be like why are end users paying a gas fee for every single transaction like that's stupid it's like going to a toll it's like going to a highway and paying a toll you know um booth like for every 10 meters you drive right either how we think about it is gas fees will be fully paid by the dap or there could be like a monthly subscription or the end users could pay gas in a different token right or you know they'll be like partial gas subsidies for example so at least for us we're like very focused on this layer of like how we could just make it very flexible for developers because they know their end users more than us how they engage like so forth with dfi applications for example um they don't necessarily have to sponsor gas they could partially gamify or make conditional transactions but when it comes to nfts when it comes to gaming like we're now powering the sandbox decentraland and a few other sort of um um marketplaces because they just see the value that the end users don't need to pay gas and so that that kind of helps and it's like understanding you know to your point like who your end users are and yeah yeah and just to add just a little bit to that i think that it's it's really interesting to focus on like the user persona because as he's mentioning before you've got different types of users you've got the expert developer wants to see all the knobs all the buttons all the detail and then you're going to have probably another persona that's going to say where's the easy button right so you can use you know techniques like you know eventually revealing the complexity like you know okay what's behind the settings button what's behind the advanced button or the people that don't care about it they just want to push the button and go right so and it's it's really clever ways to do that and then like you know their way is even more clever right they've gotten rid of the gas buttons all together and just completely removed that away so like and you know like like kayla said you've got to get it simpler easier faster better than the existing user interfaces or you're not going to get the mass adoption so tooltips are really good for that like if you want to know you click on the question mark and then it's like oh here's all the details but like if you don't want to know you don't even see it yeah this next question is uh in a similar vein um and i think we've already kind of broached the subject a little bit so when we talk about user experience in web 3 especially when it uh comes to mass adoption um i think we're often comparing that experience to that of web 2 just because that's what we're used to where a lot of that technical detail has been abstracted away almost entirely in in most cases so um engaging with web3 at least today requires a certain amount of technical fluency just to engage my question for you is um what level of technical or what demands for technical knowledge should we expect the average user to rise to i guess uh that's not a very fair way of framing it though but what sort of what should we reasonably expect that average users will be able to learn in order to gauge engage with these technologies and if that bar is relatively low how do we mitigate for that or account for that um knowledge gap kayla i have a question a clarification question yes are we saying right now are we saying like who what are we trying to like for whom for whom um i guess so like the members of my family who have never heard of metamask and i want to on i want to start introducing them to web3 at this point they're going to have to learn how to use metamask um is there a point in the future where something that doesn't require that kind of technical knowledge and how far away is it i guess i guess the other part of the question is as these technologies are introduced do we expect the average user to just naturally acquire a higher level of technical understanding in order to engage with the technologies so i i'm on like two sides because um one side tells me this really depends on the market and the market kind of dictates what happens so like one example here is so um again i don't mean to shield by economy but we we did a drop for a hundred thieves they're like this esports company in l.a like really huge um they partnered with us and web 3 off um they're sort of like this sort of easy wallet um and basically the we did 700 000 nft mints um for them over the two days and it just cried two buttons from end users it was like either logging through metamask and sign or put in your email address um and you you essentially have a wallet created for you and then what happens is again at the back end by economy does a gas transaction and the nft is minted for this for this end user again just two clicks for the end user and what we're now sort of hearing from like other folks in web 2 they're like this was a great experience we want to replicate this now web 2 is way bigger f3 currently and you know this could become a norm right but then the other part of me says we have so many millennials i actually on boarded quite a lot of friends who i never thought would get on metamask who i never thought would understand and be these degens and guess what like they kind of got there either through my help or their own research i don't expect my parents to get it at all but i think for the next generation i kind of see it but again there's the market will i think will ultimately dictate what will happen but there's always going to be a um it's like there's a highway right you could either take you know the exit through metamask and doing everything yourself or you just go straight so i think that we need to keep the bar low because part of what mass adoption means to me is that like the unbanked people in underserved countries underdeveloped countries people who don't have access to um like stable capital like we talk about um like in venezuela where like you know the inflation is out of control um i mean we could talk about inflation generally like whatever um but like where where you don't know if your government uh issued currency is gonna like be able to feed your family tomorrow um so we need to be able to keep the bar for technical understanding like at the floor for some of that like really important stuff some of the reasons that defy exists um but that said like there are ways to make wallets a lot easier like bi-economy clearly has like has something go in there with uh like use your email address um like at koi we uh launched a wallet we just actually launched the second version of the wallet um but we're working on a mobile wallet to go along with it so that we can start like how do we remove the seed phrase stuff like we're working on multi-device authentication i am like thinking a lot about um biometric identification um and like there's a lot of really cool technology there that you won't need to like keep a seed phrase locked in a safe or a security deposit box or you know the idea that my mom would know never to type her seed phrase into like you know on the internet or like into a password manager like that's just unreasonable to expect of her um i use my mom as an example a lot because she's like you know tech savvy enough but i'm sure you all can relate um but that like there are so many ways to do that and i think we're actually not that far off from getting rid of things that are so complex for you know traditional web 2 users um i think one more thing to that's important to keep in mind is that i don't think the i don't think we did a great job in web 2 either very often like very often like especially maybe if like you're a web developer you can very often see like okay this web shop was clearly built around like the idea of like html forms or like php session cookies or things like that and i think like for example seed phrases are the same thing in web3 it's like very bare bones it's it's like the okay if you're a developer that's like seems like the obvious choice okay just let them keep their seed phrase safe like that's the way to go but it's it doesn't work like that for the users like if if we're talking about mass adoption like our parents that's not going to work like credit cards as well like not the best ux in the world yeah i think i think all of those are great points and i think that you almost kind of stole my point about web too like we're marching towards web 2 as the standard for mass adoption but yeah i mean web 2 really isn't that great either to be honest i mean and we've gotten way better than that you know the html form days and like tables inside of tables and tables and date myself there but anyway so yeah the next one is really interesting like using new technologies biometrics encryption for the seed phrases using those types of things that continue to abstract that stuff away but in a safe and secure way those are going to be important for mass adoption so i i think that um you know there's there's a tipping point to march towards right now to gain this but that's you can't stop i think in this industry especially innovation is key if you pause or you stop your lunch is going to get eaten tomorrow by the next one it innovates on top of it i mean it's just moved so fast i think that the bar is never going to be stopped as far as like raising the bar right it's going to continue i am i'm going to run the risk of asking a stupid question here but it's one that i think a lot of average users will have when they go to engage with some of these things for the first time um in order to engage with web3 we currently have to engage with cryptocurrency um is crypto an absolutely necessary component of the web3 invasion of the future meaning if that if we're going to onboard people onto web3 do we have to get them into crypto first and is that always going i mean because currently that's the way it is and do you see any other ways around that or is crypto are we just true believers crypto is going to take over the world and it's not going to matter i i think that's kind of an interesting question because if the fundamentals of what we're calling web3 is really blockchain and most of that economic incentive is driven by different various forms of cryptocurrency including game theory and some other interesting things um i that's that is a really good question right because i think that you know i mean obviously decentralized finance is is taking the world by storm this is like taking all the news you know we've got collectibles and nfts and all these interesting things but i think the real killer app behind all this blockchain is smart contracts right and there's other industries there's other applications insurance supply chain logistics iot there's lots of other things carbon credit markets that could benefit from the blockchain technology and smart contracts you know the narrative of you know truth is greater than just trust me right because it's programmatically secured it's cryptographically secured and it's programmed on a blockchain right so there's no question what's going to happen or someone can't argue and say oh no no i'm not going to pay out that insurance claim let me show me the damage again you know i don't know about that oh maybe you weren't up to date on your premiums here you know oh you missed that you know payment i mean none of that stuff is going to be able to be done so i think that there's more promise beyond that but but is it a necessary component or maybe time will tell so i think blockchain obviously yes um but in the same way that we can wrap tokens i mean we have you know wrapped bitcoin on why can't we use wrapped dollars like if you're using fiat like send a transfer from your bank and like and behind the scenes we do all the conversion for you so i don't think that like fundamentally you have to understand crypto or like how to trade or like even know that you're using crypto to engage with a certain platform like if you can just pay in dollars or you know whatever like in attention rewards which is like another thing that like we at koi are doing like if you're putting content out and then you earn the tokens that way and then you're you pay the tokens from the balance that you've already earned like you don't necessarily have to know like tokens like what they are that you're using them if we just wrap you know fiat yeah i i definitely agree with your point there i mean like if you just look recently um like if you just look at how even big institutions like from from just an individual to a big institution it's very easy for anyone to just get into this space without actually having to interact with crypto per se an actual token um i mean if you look at jp morgan they kind of like got into sort of this nft space by sort of what you know they went to decentralized and built a lounge right i don't think they could um actually hold crypto in the banshee right but they're kind of involved in in the whole world free space right now and again for individual users there are many avenues of sort of let's say purchasing nfts through just fiat and not having to sort of worry about all of this so um but again like if i i just think like as web 3 expands it might be like i think it would be cool if everyone was just educated on the paradigm shift that instead of 200 countries having the ability to dictate monetary policy policy you now have any engineer or like economist could like create a monetary policy you know through a really interesting protocol right or a dow so many of them will fail but like hey now you have more like way more um experiments and we've seen many of them actually succeed and you know a lot fail so i think that paradigm shift of anyone create multi-policy i i just think that should be like spread far wide yeah that's just my opinion yeah i really like this question it's it's a very interesting question yeah cryptocurrencies and like decentralized finance by by extension are definitely like the most obvious um use cases i guess of blockchain and decentralized technologies but i think it's very important that we don't forget like the what the point of everything is it's like decentralization and all the possibilities and like making everything trustless and like removing third parties um and the authoritative like third parties from the systems is is really the the end goal and like nfts are a good example of like you don't need cryptocurrency to do nfts not necessarily and they're like other use cases we just probably haven't figured them all out yet i hope um like for example i know like projects are doing like tracing origins of like food like in supermarkets using the blockchain in a trustless manner i'm sure there's like more use cases that we can we can figure out as time progresses right that was sort of the idea behind the question i was coming i came into this space because i was told that blockchain was going to underpin everything from social media to my banking system to everything so i those are some really insightful answers at this point i think i'd like to open it up to the room for question