With growing attention on blockchain technology, more people are developing opinions about what the future of the technology will really look like. Skeptics often cite a few core barriers to blockchain adoption. For example, you can pretty regularly find issues and theories around blockchain energy, regulation, and scaling in the headlines.
But these barriers are actually common problems to new technology. And while there’s no guarantee that these challenges will resolve themselves, I think solutions will be found. I’ve seen how the blockchain community is eager to tackle these high-profile issues and move the technology forward.
Alongside these “big” issues are others that are sometimes overlooked, at least by more mainstream media. These “other” barriers have held back blockchain adoption and could continue to do so. If we don’t begin to elevate these other barriers to the same level as questions of regulation or scaling, it could take much longer before more of blockchain’s potential to remake the internet and improve many aspects of society sees the light of day. Three of these barriers are discussed below.
The UX/UI of Blockchain
The community is beginning to rally around the idea of blockchain usability. But I’d like to accelerate these discussions and make a case for why intuitive UX/UI for blockchain applications and services is so critical. It’s time to address usability with the same urgency we have around security.
Blockchain cannot achieve mainstream adoption if people are intimidated by it. Because blockchain is such an abstract and difficult technology to many people, it pushes people away. They think they need to become insiders to even get started. Most blockchain application interfaces don’t do much to change that.
I believe in blockchain’s long-term potential to fundamentally change so many aspects of our lives for the better. I also acknowledge that it’s a very hard technology to understand, especially when there’s not enough focus on designing for the end user.
We need to open access to blockchain by troubleshooting in the same way we troubleshoot other technologies. How is the UI? How is the UX? How can we communicate value to the end user with each interaction? How can we make it intuitive, comfortable, and familiar? If we can’t answer these questions, we need to assume that a given product isn’t finished and push for improvements.
Private Key Recovery
One of the main challenges to users as they begin to interact with decentralized applications and systems is the idea of the private key. New adopters of blockchain technologies, unaccustomed to handling private keys, can easily make irreparable mistakes. Some users never even make it this far; they’re too scared of the technology to even begin using it.
No matter how clearly we attempt to communicate the private key system and the nuts and bolts of how blockchain works at the outset, there will still be users who don’t understand the unique value and risks associated with their private key. More frequently, there will be those who understand the risks and still make honest mistakes. In either scenario, developers need to acknowledge the reality of this problem and begin to find new solutions.
I don’t think many people love the solutions to private key management that have been offered so far. It’s more that they just live with them. Some are very creative solutions, but even these are often incredibly complex and non-intuitive to the user. Multi-signature approaches probably aren’t going to expand blockchain adoption. Various custodial solutions might be stopgap solutions to a broader range of users, and some provide a way of recovering a lost private key, but they don’t match the security benefits and/or are just challenging to use. We can’t rely on custodial services as the de facto new user solution.
Instead, we need technological innovation that gives us true private key recovery without any loss of security or usability. Blockchain will not become widely used if there isn’t an easy and secure way for users to recover lost private keys. We need to view this as a requirement to mainstream blockchain adoption.
Cryptocurrency as the Default Use Case
I understand that this is more of a publicity problem than an internal issue within the blockchain community, but I still view it as an important concern. After all, if blockchain remains synonymous with cryptocurrency in mainstream circles, we all lose. We limit the scope of our conversations and solutions to just one use case.
The developers I talk to are excited about the broad applications of blockchain, not just its cryptocurrency roots, but we all need to be more vocal about what excites us and why. There are many developers out there who don’t want to work on blockchain technologies because of the baggage associated with it — the perception that blockchain and its community is about cryptoassets and ICOs. Or various kinds of unsavory activity. Or certain values that might not align with theirs.
The future of blockchain is bigger than that. We need to be better ambassadors, articulating a vision of blockchain’s long-term possibilities, a world with blockchain powering many great innovations and businesses, and with the potential for massive positive social impact.
The Overarching Importance of These Barriers
These problems might not seem overly challenging, but the barriers they create will require just as much creativity and innovation as those that are seemingly more complex. While issues of scalability, regulation, and energy still dominate current dialogue, I hope the conversation can expand to feature these other problems and the implications of solutions to these problems.
In my own work, these are the barriers that I find myself brushing against time and time again, and I could use some help. Will you join me?