My first experience using DeFi was in April 2021. I wanted to get a bag of Safemoon, a trending ‘shitcoin’ on the BSC network. Since that was going to be my first on-chain trade I wasn’t exactly sure of what to do when I opened Pancakeswap, and after minutes of trying to figure out how to use Pancakeswap I finally searched for “how to buy safemoon” on Youtube and followed a step-by-step tutorial on how to purchase the token. It took a long time and I didn’t understand anything I was doing, but I managed to buy those tokens in the end.

This frustrating onboarding experience is what every other new DeFi user has to endure before they finally get acquainted with these products, after which they have to put up with yet another series of poor UX as they continue to use them. How does this affect the adoption of what is preached to be the future of Finance and the solution for banking the unbanked?

What exactly is DeFi?

DeFi, a shortened word for Decentralized Finance, is the movement that allows users to utilize financial services such as borrowing, lending, and trading without the need to rely on centralized entities such as banks.

Imagine being able to perform banking activities without needing an actual bank. Imagine having your funds in your custody and not at the mercy of a centralized authority or government. These are the advantages DeFi brings.

According to statistics from the World Bank Global Findex Report 2017, an estimate of 1.7 billion adults globally are unbanked and financially excluded. This certainly leaves a large market share for DeFi but adopting this new age technology, for many unbanked adults, is an issue as DeFi products are difficult to use.

Let us explore some of the User Experience issues across several DeFi products that are hindering the widespread adoption of DeFi.

1. Poor Copy-writing:

The copy of many DeFi products are mostly filled with highly technical jargon that can’t be understood by the average internet user. This sparks the question “How are people supposed to understand what the product is about and how to use it when the Copywrite is tailored for a highly technical audience?”. For example, Beethoven-x, an AMM protocol on Fantom where users can swap and invest tokens uses complex and confusing copy styles in their Hero-section which is an important part of a landing page for user conversion.

Simplifying the copy on these platforms can go a long way in making them more usable for everyone.

“What does this even mean?”

2. No onboarding flows or user guides:

If you’re an active degen, seeing multiple people ask the project devs in online communities to explain steps on how to use different features on their platform wouldn’t be strange to you. These conversations are always long and frustrating for both the user and dev most times, and this bad user experience simply stems from a lack of consideration of users.

Of course, first-time users cannot be differentiated from returning users because there is no signup/sign-in process, the onboarding flows and guides can always be suggested every time a wallet is connected or a feature is about to be used. This will help more people use these products without necessarily needing the help of others.

3. Improper handling of feedback:

Many DeFi platforms do not have user feedback CTAs to report issues encountered when using the platform. The ones that do will redirect you to their community channels to make the complaint openly to everyone.

I tried transferring some $ATOM from Cosmos to Juno using Junoswap once. After several minutes and trials the transaction didn’t go through so I clicked the “report an issue” button which redirected me to Juno’s telegram group. I made my complaint there and my DM immediately was spammed by several scam accounts pretending to be Juno devs and customer representatives. No real Juno developer or community manager replied to me.

This UX flaw exposes many users to security threats through which they could ignorantly share their private keys or click malicious links and lose their funds to fraudsters

Links to verified customer representative accounts should be provided instead.

My Telegram account few minutes after my lodging complaint

4. Complex interfaces and user flows:

Blockchain technology is still in its early days, and there are unsolved technical problems that affect the design of DeFi products. An example is the interoperability problem, and how it could lead to the loss of tokens if you select a wrong chain for the recipient address when transferring tokens. I have personally cost myself some funds by transferring to BEP2 network instead of BEP20 network.

Errors like this can be avoided or reduced by creating simpler interfaces for newbies. Two versions of a product can be developed for newbies and pros to satisfy both categories of users. Uniswap has a switch to ‘expert mode’ when trading which makes the product usable for users with different skill levels.

Uniswap token swap

Conclusion

DeFi is still in its early days and the space will continue to evolve rapidly over the next few years, but if we want to increase adoption and make DeFi a mainstream banking solution then we need to pay attention to the users who these products are being built for. User Experience design and research should be a priority when building and launching these products into the market.