From a design perspective, web3 onboarding is better than ever. But as wallet designers have been lavishing attention on UI/UX, the number of features routinely bundled into a non-custodial wallet has proliferated. This has made a complex challenge harder still. How do you add features while simultaneously streamlining user flow?
Enhancing usability while expanding features is a tough ask, but where there’s a will there’s a way. Through abstracting complexity during the onboarding process while making advanced features available within the wallet, the best designers have achieved a happy medium. As a result, it’s easy for beginners to get started while experienced users can access the multi-chain features they expect for trading, swapping, and interacting with an array of dapps.
Streamlining the Gateway to Web3
The wallet is the gateway to web3. Whether incorporated into a general-purpose crypto app or released as a standalone application, the wallet is literally and metaphorically the key to web3. It’s no secret that mainstream users have zero prior knowledge of public-private key cryptography, seed phrases, and gas tokens. Which is why, for wallets targeted at beginners and intermediate users, these have been the first things to go.
The emergence of smart wallet technology has enabled developers to eliminate the need to record a 12-word seed phrase in order to get started. This has been abstracted using technology such as multi-party computation (MPC), allowing wallet creation and authentication to be completed using social login such as Google.
These so-called seedless wallets also enable developers to subsidize gas, ensuring that there is no need to hold the native token such as ETH in order to transact. Throw in a fiat onramp and it’s possible to create a wallet and make your first transaction without requiring a crash course in web3 architecture. The user can simply create a password, purchase USDC for instance with credit card and use it to purchase an NFT.
But once users have made their first transaction and decided to explore further, they’re going to want to do more than simply buy and store crypto and NFTs. At some stage, they’ll likely express an interest in exploring dapps, participating in DeFi, and trading tokens. All of this can be done within modern web3 wallets whose developers have made great strides in streamlining user flow and bundling powerful features without introducing complexity.
Balancing Usability With Advanced Features
Ctrl Wallet is part of a new breed of web3 wallets aiming to hit the Goldilocks Zone where accessibility and usability can coexist. It embodies the progress made by developers in simplifying onboarding while retaining the sort of features that experienced users now expect. Rebranded from XDEFI, Ctrl offers features such as Gas Tank for simplified fee management.
As XDEFI, Ctrl Wallet earned a reputation for its cross-chain support and this capability has been retained: there’s support for more than 200 blockchains, but gas abstraction is available on every chain. As a result, it’s possible to mint NFTs, trade memecoins, and stake tokens without needing to fuss over having the native token with which to pay gas.
Other web3 wallet developers are now routinely adopting this approach to simplify cross-chain trading. This isn’t just benefiting beginners, who are freed from the minutiae of gas tokens and fee calculations; it’s also a godsend for experienced users, who can seek out opportunities on any network they choose.
The Evolution of Web3 Wallets
First-generation non-custodial wallets were all about securely storing, sending, and swapping crypto – which they’ve proven very adept at, even if the UI/UX wasn’t always forgiving for new users. But as crypto has evolved, so have the expectations of what a web3 wallet should do. It’s no longer just a gateway to crypto: it is crypto, which means bundling a wide range of tools and features. From perps to prediction markets, there’s now a wealth of ways to interact onchain and it can all be done within a single wallet.
Integrated dapp browsers have made it possible to access the best decentralized applications available on various chains while staying within the secure sandbox of the web3 wallet. Because wallets curate the dapps they feature, users can be assured of accessing legitimate applications and avoiding scams. The onus still remains on the user, however, to sensibly interact with these: web3 wallets can show the way but it’s the individual who ultimately makes the crucial decisions about what to swap and where.
And it’s not just traditional DeFi activities such as staking, trading, and liquidity mining that users can now do onchain and in-wallet: as new use cases such as RWAs emerge, enterprising wallet developers are making these features available to their users.
If web3 does achieve mass adoption, there will be two critical factors driving this: there must be things worth doing onchain and it should be easy to do them. Which is why web3 wallet design is at the forefront of this quest. Good design should underpin all consumer-facing systems, but it’s critical when interacting with web3’s complex infrastructure. There will always be a learning curve, but thanks to improvements in wallet design, it’s now shallower than ever.
