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7 Comments

Digital wallets. Are they awkward?

I'm trying to gauge people experience with digital wallets. I use Metamask and Coinbase Wallet. In my experience, Metamask assumes you have a level of experience with crypto.

What wallets do you all use? are they confusing?

What do you like about them?

I would appreciate anything you have to add about your experience with them.

Thank you

  1. 3

    I recently started using Phantom which is a chrome extension based wallet mostly for Solana. It's pretty simple and straightforward, has built in support for staking and has a way to display NFTs if you're into that. I haven't run into any issues with it thus far, but I only use it for holding and staking.

  2. 3

    I use Exodus and I think it's a good wallet. It's very polished UX-wise, supports a fairly large number of different assets, and is non-custodial. It works like I expect it to.

    I think the single most awkward thing about wallets are managing private keys. Consider if you're a casual, most apps you use today are password, fingerprint or face ID protected (if at all). Banking apps included. Juggling around a key among different devices can be confusing.

  3. 3

    Every wallet will require some level of familiarity with what it's storing. When you use Google Pay/Apple Pay, you are expected to understand what the USD value is and where it comes from. Similarly, with any crypto wallet, you are expected to understand what the crypto value is and where it comes from.

    There are some wallets which try to put crypto value is more familiar terms to people who understand USD value, but they fail to explain how that translates to crypto units. ("Why am I paying $242 in transaction fees to send $5? This app is a scam!")

    Having something non-custodial effectively means that your audience knows what they are storing. (Can't really have true non-custodial wallet for any fiat)

    (You can take this concept beyond money as well, think a card wallet holds cards for which people understand what the value is and where it comes from)

    Check out Rainbow, Argent, Crypto.com and Trust Wallet, and you'll understand the differences in the approach.

    Being in the crypto space for a while now, I can tell you the "poor experience" mostly comes from "not enough experience", although they aren't entirely the same.

    1. 1

      Thanks, Akshat. Your response has been helpful.

      The Google Pay/Apple Pay analogy was a good way to look at it.

      I'm newish to crypto, and I see transaction fees for any newcomer as being a "moment of truth" to gauge their level of curiosity and conviction for the crypto space.

      I like Metamask and had no issues understanding how to use it.
      But the curse of knowledge can be sneaky. From what I've noticed, deep knowledge can sometimes leave poor design and functionality choices unnoticed.

      I appreciate your opinion. It might be a resounding one.

  4. 1

    I have a ledger nano S but I haven't had to use it yet.

    I only use Metamask these days ( since it's the only wallet I need for all of my transactions.) I think metamask works pretty well and is quite easy to use once you get the hang of it (which shouldn't take too long.)

    I used to use samouraiwallet for my bitcoin transactions and I loved all the features and the UX - (the best designed & developed wallet imo)

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