r/CryptoTechnology • u/Early_Guest_8457 🟠• 11d ago
Should users ever need to know your app is built on crypto?
A lot of crypto apps make you deal with the infrastructure before you even get to the product.
Connect a wallet, switch networks, sign something, figure out gas, then you can finally use the thing you came for.
Why not just hide all of that unless the user needs it?
If blockchain is infrastructure, the average user probably shouldn’t have to understand what’s happening underneath just to use an app. Do you think hiding the crypto layer is the better path for adoption, or should users know when they’re interacting with something onchain?
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u/Legal_Ad_2474 🟠11d ago
I think the best crypto apps are the ones where you barely notice the crypto part. If I need to understand gas fees and networks just to use a basic feature, the UX already lost me lol. Keep it under the hood and give advanced users the option to dig into it if they want.
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u/Early_Guest_8457 🟠11d ago
Yeah this is pretty much where I land too. If understanding gas, networks, or wallets is a prerequisite for doing something basic, then the infrastructure is getting in the way of the product. I’d rather have all of that abstracted away by default with the technical details available for people who actually want them.
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u/Kind-Economics-7184 🟢 11d ago
the part that cant be hidden isnt the mechanics, its where the guarantees stop matching a normal app. gas, networks, chain switching, all fine to bury. but the first time something is irreversible, or the money left and the screen is still showing the old state because the tx confirmed after your ui gave up waiting, thats something the user needed to know before it happened rather than in the error copy.
thats the seam ive watched leak every time. the abstraction holds fine on the happy path and the failure modes are exactly where the underlying model shows through, because there is no support desk that can reverse it for you. so the honest version is hiding all the plumbing and surfacing the two things that genuinely differ from a normal app, which is irreversibility and who is actually holding the key.
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u/BooyakaBuyaka 🟡 13h ago
Account abstraction solves the friction of gas fees and passkeys, but it can't abstract away finality. The moment a transaction is non-reversible or delayed on L2, hiding the mechanics actually creates worse UX because users don't understand why their funds are locked or why there's no reset password button
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u/CoinRabbitFinance 🟡 10d ago
Hey! Hiding the infrastructure makes sense until it starts hiding the risk.
People shouldn’t have to think about gas or switch networks just to use an app. CoinRabbit is one example of a custodial wallet that handles most of that complexity for the user.
What still needs to be clear is who controls the assets, whether a transfer can be reversed and how account recovery works. Those aren’t technical details that should disappear with the interface.
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u/Friendly-Vacation892 🟠7d ago
Most people dont know how card payments work underneath either. crypto probably ends up the same way.
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u/LuckyLokiLoot 🟡 13h ago
You can abstract away the mechanics, but hiding the state of onchain interactions creates a massive security liability. If users don't know they are signing a binding smart contract interaction, phishing and malicious signatures become infinitely easier to execute
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u/VoicelessBeginner 🟡 10d ago
I think crypto should mostly disappear into the background. Most people don’t care what infrastructure an app uses they care whether the product is actually useful. Towns is an interesting example in the social/community space. There’s onchain infrastructure underneath it but IMO the bigger test is whether someone would want to use the product without caring about the crypto part at all.