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Re:Ask HN: How aware are you about building decentralised so... by rawtxapp on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:37PM (#27750839)
> - UX of interacting with/running code. This isn't users going to a website or downloading an app from an app store. Until it is, it's a non-starter.

I don't know which projects you've used, but in my experience, the DeFi projects I've used have much better UX than any bank I've ever had.

Most of them just have a simple "Connect wallet" button you click and you're in, no need for a password, whatsoever [1]. There are some easy to use wallets like MetaMask, just have to set it up once.

1: For example, https://oasis.app/borrow.

Re:Ask HN: How aware are you about building decentralised so... by chrisco255 on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:53PM (#27751149)
I think this "Connect wallet" or "sign in with Ethereum" feature is a killer use case. It's a solution for SSO with public/private cryptography without giving your identity away to Facebook or Google or Paypal. I love it and can't wait for more websites to start using that as an identity/auth solution.
Re:Ask HN: How aware are you about building decentralised so... by danpalmer on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:40PM (#27750911)
So I click "connect a wallet", and I'm given a list of 7 options, none of which a typical user will have heard of, let alone understand what a wallet is.

Compared to going to my bank's website and clicking "get a quote for a loan", filling in some personal details, and getting an email?

I understand why this feels exciting to tech-minded people but this essentially proves my point.

Re:Ask HN: How aware are you about building decentralised so... by rawtxapp on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:48PM (#27751052)
Maker already has thousands of vaults, so clearly people do know what it is.

I've never had an online loan application work, always had to go to their branch or call them which is a lot more work than installing one browser extension called MetaMask.

A lot of these complaints remind me of the time when all the newspapers were writing about how internet is never gonna succeed because x, y, z[1].

There was a time where email was a "complex" thing, you can find out videos of news anchors trying to understand the "@" [2].

1: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CSyNg

Re:Ask HN: How aware are you about building decentralised so... by danpalmer on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @12:58PM (#27751225)
This is a good point. In the early days of the web these things were only accessible to the few people who really understood them, like where DeFi is at right now.

Over time we got companies like AOL, Yahoo, eventually Facebook and Twitter. This is how most people use the web, what these companies offer(ed) is safety, accessibility, consistency, centralisation.

On the early web people knew it was unsafe to just hand over your card details, it took us developments like HTTPS and 3D Secure to make that safe. Right now DeFi is in a similar place, it's a wild-west of technology that has been fraught with hacks and scandals where many have lost a lot of money.

To truly take off it needs to develop that trust, and to develop it in a way that is safe and accessible to all.

I know you can do it safely now, but you need to know what things like hardware wallets are (which are a terrible UX), and even then we've seen hardware wallets being used as an attack vector recently.