Coinbase CEO addresses app UX concerns

There will certainly be important news regarding the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase soon. This was disclosed in a post on X yesterday by CEO Brian Armstrong.

Cryptonews: A UX issue with Coinbase

Armstrong specifically mentioned a UX (User eXperience) issue.

In fact, Armstrong claims that the primary Coinbase app’s UX is “broken” in terms of NFTs, dApps, and L2s.

He consequently exhorts people to pay attention to this and start making improvements.

The user experience (UX) of the Coinbase wallet software also requires a lot of improvement, says Armstrong.

In order to determine what needs to be improved and how, he also asks consumers for comments.

Therefore, it is likely that the user interface of Coinbase’s apps will be updated over the coming months or years, especially that of the wallet and that of the Web3 and Layer 2 services.

In spite of the high fees for on-chain transactions, Layer 2 transactions have not really taken off, even though the opposite would be expected.

An easier user interface would be very helpful in this case because crypto tools are frequently challenging for most users to utilize.

The Coinbase Layer 2 solution

One of these Layer 2s is Base, which was introduced by Coinbase and is based on Ethereum.

Only a few days have passed since Base’s introduction, yet already it appears to be producing intriguing effects.

It already records more than 600,000 transactions per day on its blockchain, according to official data, albeit some of these transactions may be the result of the multiple memecoins that are arising on this new blockchain or by NFTs like those of Coca-Cola.

Additionally, the blockchain of Base has only had a little over 800,000 addresses collectively registered, suggesting that the addresses that are producing the new transactions are largely the same ones.

The use of Base as a Layer 2 of Ethereum to exchange ETH or stablecoins like USDT at a reduced cost may be one of the new capabilities that Coinbase’s apps get in the upcoming months.

Although Armstrong made a hint that the internal development team is already working on them, no other new features have yet been disclosed.

The key to widespread adoption is UX

One of the most crucial and essential components in popularizing crypto tools is by far their user experience.

That is, widespread acceptance of cryptocurrencies won’t happen until crypto tool UIs (User Interfaces) become simpler and more user-friendly.

This issue could seem insignificant to outsiders or experts in the subject, but in actuality it is really serious.

Additionally, from the beginning, Coinbase was designed to be a project for the general public, making it simple for anybody to access and participate in this emerging market.

Actually, while maintaining its concentration on retail users, the corporation has over time devoted more and more of its resources to institutional services that are not geared toward the general public.

This is even more obvious during bull runs, when the excitement attracts tens of thousands of new users to the cryptocurrency space who have no prior experience.

The tools they utilize must be simple and intuitive; there is still more work to be done in this area if we want to enable them to engage without severe issues, and possibly even to stay in.

Crypto news: Coinbase’s development

Three years before Ethereum, in 2012, when Bitcoin was still the only truly significant cryptocurrency in use, Coinbase was established.

It started out as a platform for buying and selling Bitcoin, and later it added support for other cryptocurrencies.

Since institutional investors weren’t yet actively participating, it was at the time nearly exclusively targeted at a retail audience.

It was initially primarily targeted at the US market but eventually became available to customers abroad.

Since Mt.Gox had filed for bankruptcy in 2014, the second major cryptocurrency bull run, which occurred in 2017, not only made it the top exchange in the world, but it also assisted many others in making their initial forays into the market.

Instead, it concentrated more on the creation of institutional services during the previous significant bull run because there wasn’t much of a market for them at the time.

The demise of FTX in November of last year created fresh opportunities for US-focused cryptocurrency exchanges, and it’s possible that Coinbase wants to draw retail customers in the case of another bull run.

It is still to be seen whether the recently promised enhancements will be merely surface-level or whether they will actually make it much simpler for novices and those with little knowledge to utilize crypto technologies.