Can The Ethereum Emojidress Start a Revolution to Save Millions From Fraud?

Simplifying the crypto wallet user experience is the start of a UX revolution

There's a word for a user interface that only works well for some people and it's #SUX, as the saying goes.

It's not often you can put a price on lost opportunity but in the case of crypto hacks we can identify precisely what could have been saved, broken down by exchange in this handy crypto exchange hack. As this article is being written, the CEO of Binance is announcing two more hacks to add to the year's total.

In 2021-2022 the total amount loss in hacks and scams like rug pulls is more than $13 billion, and the only sure thing is there will be more, because while buying and trading crypto is dead easy on an exchange, keeping digital assets safe from hacks, fraud and freezes is complicated. We can blame it on UX (the CEO of Binance does) that is for some people with technical knowledge, and not the average person. In other words, hardware wallet usability, to date, SUX - something *some* people can figure out, but most won't bother, to sometimes disastrous results.

“Even though it has a screen, this screen is so small that I can’t tap the numbers with my finger and enter the password."        

Even the simple act of verifying an address before you send funds can be fraught with anxiety. Ethereum addresses are 42 characters long. Glancing back and forth between screens trying to see if 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce839613fffba74279579268 is the same as 0xb794f5ea0ba39494ce8396l3fffba74279579268 (hint: it's not) is more than a little anxiety-producing. Try to find the difference in these addressees and very quickly you will recognize the frustration reflected in our our customer research quotes sprinkled throughout this post. It's not just crypto users though - all humans have trouble holding more than 5-9 digits in their working memory - in social science it's called "the rule of 7 plus or minus two".

On the other hand, comparing 1) ??????????? to 2) ??????????? is a far simpler matter. We can see right away that the boot in (1) does not match the shoe in (2), without having to minutely examine the order of the characters mid-string. This is how the Hito Emojidress feature works, allowing wallet holders to quickly verify an address is correct, sans anxiety. A simple feature that is a simple nod to how human memory works.

“I’ve bought a hardware for my mom, but she was unable to transfer her BTC there.”        

Why it matters: in the crypto industry, usability is inextricably linked to security. A crypto hardware wallet must be simple to use in a way that users expect and are already familiar with - complexity can lead to catastrophe. This makes introducing new security steps critical, and is exactly the place innovation is most needed.

The Hito Emojidress feature is just one of the ways the Hito team makes security steps like authenticating a 42-character Ethereum address a simple matter of match game, pairing symbols and colors.

The power of user experience is such that it can transform entire industries - before the iPhone we couldn't imagine all of our photos and music on the same device we relied on for calls. The revolutionary iPhone design with its no-button surface screen full of apps went on to redefine the way consumers interacted with many aspects of life and therefore many other industries, from dating to news to shopping.

We are now indeed a global village, not only all of us accessing the same services but even the same gestures - swiping, scrolling and tapping - to do everything from flirt online, play games, order dog food from Amazon, donate to a political candidate... even buy and trade crypto on exchanges.

“I’ve bought a ledger, opened the box and had no ideas how to use it. It’s still in the box.”        

Crypto exchanges have made it easy to take on too much risk by consumers either not fully understanding nature of custodial wallets ("Not your keys, not your crypto"), or understanding but feeling the risk was lower than the inconvenience factor posed by self-custody using a hardware wallet, aka cold storage. More likely, most crypto users thought their keys were safe enough, that hacks are something that always happens to someone else. Most probably had the good intention of getting a hardware wallet - someday.

Regardless of why, the failure to self-custody has resulted in a bloodbath of crypto hacks, with ImmuneFi reporting $10 billion lost in hacks and ruug pulls in 2021, and an additional $3 billion reported stolen in hacks throughout October 2022 - a record figure even leaving out November and December hacks of FTX, Ankr and Hay.

Just as a great user experience opens new worlds of possibilities, a bad user experience inhibits opportunities. When CDs replaced vinyl on the mass market, mobile CD players quickly followed, but the technology wasn't ready with early models requiring, as one reviewer put it "to walk around with the comportment of a ballet dancer stealing the family jewels from a stately home in order to stop the thing from jumping." This is a case of tech design detracting from, even totally subverting the very experience it existed to provide - something crypto hardware wallets with their tiny screens and buttons have also been guilty of.

"The Nano offers great security and peace of mind but doesn’t excel at ease of use" ~Infinitus Tech        

Crypto hardware wallets are a product whose uneven design - and thus user experience - has inhibited the growth of the category, and thereby inhibits the shared mission of all wallet industry brands, i.e. crypto security. The problem is urgent; a strong argument can be made that the UX is the most critical component of a wallet (see: UI/UX — The Most Critical Components of a Wallet). The UX history of the hardware wallet has kept the vast majority of crypto holders - more than 300 million people - on the sidelines, taking their chances keeping their crypto in exchange wallets even as hacks rains down all around them. This won't change until hardware wallets build for not just some humans (which SUX), or for every human, like Hito.

Sometimes to see the change you want to see in the world, you must take responsibility to be the change you want to see in the world. At Hito, we take responsibility for the user experience being smooth and accessible for everyone - a goal we actively work towards every day.

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