Web3 Faces Seed Phrase Barrier for Mass Adoption

One of the primary obstacles preventing the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies is the complexity of the existing Web3 wallets.

In the future, cryptocurrency wallets with more convenient sign-in options and password recovery capabilities may become the norm.

As per Bumblefudge, the chief janitor of Chain Agnostic Standards Alliance (CASA), an independent blockchain development group, the cryptocurrency sector must progress beyond its intricate seed words to enable widespread use.

During his keynote address at Berlin, Germany’s Web3 Summit 2024, he stated:

“Seed phrases are not going to work for the other 95% of the world. But, um, the solution to that is unfortunately boring, ugly standards, governance.”

Mainstream users still find today’s intricate crypto onboarding process difficult because it necessitates setting up a wallet with native gas tokens and unrecoverable seed phrases before they can interact on a network.

Better user-centric features are needed for DApps and Web3 wallets.

To attract mainstream users, Web3 wallets should prioritize adding more user-centric features and eschewing complicated seed words.

Bumblefudge clarified, however, that this would necessitate an industry-wide collaboration standard from wallet providers and developers:

“No one wants to write down how they’re using it because they’re all competing with each other. They all want the better parts, the implementation. So nothing’s going to be interoperable. Nothing’s going to be secure.”

Wallet manufacturers will only be able to develop more user-friendly and interoperable solutions, such as passkeys, in the presence of a standard for cooperation. He continued, saying:

“We need to be going down to the user instead of up from what the chain wants and what the DeFi protocol wants. We need standards for user expectations.”

Cryptocurrency wallets and protocols must reduce complexity for the initial billion users.

Other well-known cryptocurrency companies also support friction point elimination.

Notably, Coinbase’s senior director of engineering, Chintan Turakhia, stated that more user-friendly apps are needed to attract the first billion consumers to the blockchain.

Turakhia, at EthCC, stated:

“If our goal is to bring in the next billion users — and let’s start with just 100 million — we have to take all those friction points out.”

Coinbase introduced its smart wallet with more user-friendly features at the beginning of June to encourage widespread use. These capabilities substitute account names and passcodes for difficult seed words.

Turakhia believes that cryptocurrency wallet providers will have to offer these simpler sign-in alternatives as standard in the future.