Onboarding The Future
Don't fall off the bridge
This newsletter is about ideas and strategies that will help onboard the next generation to web 3.
After writing my last piece, “The Internet is Getting F***ing Exciting” I wanted to focus more on the transition from Web 2 to Web 3. I think this is the biggest reason why Web 3.0 would fail when trying to get to the masses.
Law of Diffusion of Innovation
What I love about the startup world is that there are terminology and laws for every part of growth. Everyone has probably seen the Simon Sinek Ted Talk about the Law of Diffusion of Innovation, and if you haven’t, watch this first. It’s only two minutes and it’s well worth it.
I keep seeing this stat on Twitter, “The internet has 4,500,000,000 users. NFT’s have 300,000 users and Defi has 10,000,000 users”. This leads everyone to believe we are still very early in this transition, which is true, but in order to grow these numbers the tools for on-boarding need to get much better. If you want to look at these numbers in terms of %
NFT users account for .00667% of the total internet users
Defi users account for .22% of the total internet users
Let’s look at this on the Law of Diffusion of Innovation scale:
I put crypto and web 3 separate because even though crypto powers web 3, I think adoption for it has happened faster than overall web 3. If you notice, we also have a tipping point, where the cultural transformation occurs.
Getting to this tipping point, some say around 18%, is the hardest part. In web 3, we have to build tools that will help us achieve this tipping point.
Helping Onboarding
We have to make the transition easier and less intimidating. All this terminology and change is very intimidating for 40’s+ and young kids who are normalized to a Web 2.0 environment.
Most people, the 34% type of people, are very comfortable with web 2 platforms and the switch is hard. Coinbase did an excellent job making the transition to buying crypto as easy as buying a stock. That’s why they have over 68 million users.
Multiple areas are in need of easier on-boarding tools:
NFT’s: Someone needs to build the “Coinbase for Buying NFT’s”. NFT’s are way more than just pictures of art, they represent real ownership of an asset. The use case for NFT’s expands far beyond membership in a community or ownership of a cool art piece. More people deserve to be able to buy these assets, but it has to be easier. I believe FTX is working on a platform like this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Coinbase does as well.
Tokens: New web 3 platforms like Mirror, have community tokens that grant you access to certain features, for Mirror that’s publishing rights. For other websites, it could be access to new features or the ability to post. Whatever it is, once someone is on 5 websites with 5 different tokens, it going to get confusing. The purpose of these tokens is to give consumers ownership of the companies they participate in, but in order to understand this, the terminology and management system needs to become frictionless. This may mean a token-focused wallet or universal tokens for specific industries.
Wallets: Pretty simple, wallets should be easier to understand and easy to use. There also needs to be a central wallet that combines the likes of ETH, SOL, WETH and more.
General Websites and Terminology: Look at a website like https://www.helium.com. For me, a pretty native mind to crypto and web 3, this is confusing. For the average person, a website like this is gibberish. The terminology and layout needs to change so people can understand exactly what is happening. It almost needs a “explain to me like I’m 5 section”.
These are some of the biggest problems I see. I would love to build solutions, but I think there are people who are much more equipped to solve these problems than I am.
From my end, I have thought about building a Morning-Brew-type newsletter explaining web 3 projects and ideas. If this is interesting, like this tweet and I may start it!
