I drive product market fit and product led growth. Ideas are worthless; success = max cycles of execution, failure, learning.
California, USA
Joined December 2020
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Dan retweeted
Things I’ve Learned
What I wish I knew at 18…
1. College is mostly a scam
I’m glad I went to college, because I wanted to work on Wall Street. But today, I wouldn’t waste $300,000 on it, and I wouldn’t want to work in banking. Instead, I’d load up on college credits during high school, go to a school like the University of Texas to have fun, graduate in 3 years debt-free, and travel around the world for a year.
1/ I’ve seen a ton of “takeaways”from @EthCC at this point. Almost all of them have reiterated:
1. Ecosystem is completely focused on infrastructure
2. Lack of application/product development for end users
3. Recognition that 1+ 2 = unsustainable, makes zero sense long term.
my main takeaway from @ethcc is that everyone is building their own slightly different infrastructure protocol, while the vast minority are actually building any apps to run on all of this infrastructure.
the sceptic in me realizes most of these people just want to get rich but i also recognize there are many genuinely necessary things being built, improvements being made, but it all just blurs together at some point
it’s easy to sell hopium to investors, literally you can make enough money to retire before launching *shit* so no wonder this is happening
it’s much harder to ship useful apps, plus when you ship an app you actually have to have real users and not airdrop farmers (running alongside their own bots like most every protocol is also doing)
it feels like living in some alternate universe sometimes where everyone is in this big circle jerk discussing hypothetical and theoretical situations that will happen magically but not so many are doing the actual work to ship apps anyone who is not completely autistic would want to use
this will make me unpopular in a lot of crypto circles where we’re all supposed to pump each others bags into oblivion and use our network as exit liquidity but fuck it i don’t really care
end of the day there are tons of genuinely great people in this space, some of my best friends i’ve had ever are here, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make a great loving doing it. i just wish there were more smart people applying themselves to the application layer, realizing we may make less money but fuck it who cares we’re still doing better than most people in this world
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We continue to push this product forward. Excited for you to give it a try!
UPDATE ALERT 🚨
💳 Buy and sell crypto using Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, Mastercard, Cash App, or your bank.
✈️ Improved the deposit and withdraw funds UX/UI to ensure the safety of your crypto.
🐞 Minor bug fix associated with account recovery.
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Dan retweeted
My latest with @shutterbugsid explores how narratives around value accrual in protocols have evolved over the years and what can even be moats in the open-source and capital flight age.
Written with an abundance of data from @tokenterminal
decentralised.co/p/value-acc…
Dan retweeted
“Specify a preferred currency for easy transactions with friends” ✨✨✨✨
i know, you adorable folks will say “we can do that in our AA wallet”.
Vybe is an AA wallet. and instead of saying gas and talking about farts they just say “preferred currency”
oh. vybe has MPC too
hbu?
Dan retweeted
It is embarrassing. This is the exact reason we created Vybe. Simple 30 sec onboarding directly from your mobile device into self custodial account. 0-fee peer-to-peer transfers on over 10 currencies. Auto swap on transfer into your currency of choice. testflight.apple.com/join/C7…
Make it easier for users to participate in the ecosystem, you say?
Transfers, swaps... replicating behavior of those you trust, in a swipe!
Most ppl will not endure the hurdles required to participate. We believe trust in existing relationships can reduce time to active participation.
We just launched swipe to replicate on our social feed - copy the behavior you see from those you already trust.
@letsvybe_
Web2 vs Web3 UX
I was asked by a reporter from a crypto publication about the disparity between web2 and web3 UX. It’s a meaningful line of questioning that isn't covered enough. So I’m going to share some half-baked thoughts in hopes that it triggers more discourse.
Why is web3 UX considerably worse than web2 UX?
The most unique challenge that web3 UX faces is permanence. Unlike web2, every action taken on the blockchain is irreversible. There's no undo button on the blockchain and mistakes are expensive.
So more often than not, product teams prioritize security and error prevention over convenience. As they should. But it requires substantially more cognitive effort for the user.
In order to keep users safe and prevent costly errors, you have to show the user what's under the hood upfront in order for them to feel in control and reduce errors. Informing the user usually involves surfacing technical info, which requires more thinking and upfront education.
Think of it this way: Web2 is like driving an automatic car. It's straightforward; you get in, press the pedal, and off you go. Web3, on the other hand, is more like driving stick. You need to understand the gears, the clutch, and constantly monitor the tachometer otherwise you’ll damage the transmission or stall the car.
Is web3 lacking talent?
From what I've seen, most product teams are engineering driven. The designer to developer ratios are lower than in web2. That usually results in more technical solutions.
One guess: Over the last few years, the tolerance for difficult-to-use apps is asymmetrically high because there’s been a financial incentive for users to overcome it. Most products and protocols have competed on incentives, not usability.
It’s a chicken or egg problem with attracting designers. Designers help make great products, and great products help attract designers.
The big talent unlock in my opinion is creating crypto applications that are consumer-oriented—sexy, highly visible products with a large user base.
I think the next crypto cycle will be driven by consumer apps that are powered by crypto, but users won’t know it’s crypto unless they look closely (gaming, music, social apps, etc.).
What are you and other industry figures trying to do about it?
The next cycle (consumer crypto) will require infrastructure that makes the crypto part feel invisible. And we’re basically there: web2 logins that spin up wallets in the background (i.e. magic link, privy, Coinbase WAAS, etc.), simple on and off-ramps (i.e. moonpay, ansible, ratio, etc.).
It’s not just third-parties that can improve this, but the base protocol layer too. There are a series of upgrades and changes that make wallet creation and management easier with smart contracts and NFTs. The ones in my purview: EIP-4337 and EIP-6551.
There are also several emerging Layer 2, scaling solutions and cross-chain compatibilities that improve the UX of the interactions *after* onboarding stages, too. That will reduce UX burden created by gas fees.
A lot of factors are converging to lower the amount of education needed to participate and get started, and that’s the foundation for most of the UX issues.
Ultimately, it’s a vicious cycle of solving UX problems and then making better products that require solving more UX problems. The more consumer-oriented products we create, the more of a forcing function it is for infrastructure and talent.
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TL;DR
Web3 UX faces unique challenges, namely protecting users from irreversible mistakes. However, the rise of consumer apps that abstract away the blockchain and new, user-friendly infrastructure signals promising progress.
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