What the redditor did was analogous to ignoring the exposed UI elements on a web page and instead opening up the console and calling the JavaScript functions directly. The average user doesn’t try to do that, and so any such failure is not an issue of the website “needing an advanced understanding”; simply following its UI elements is enough.

So it’s unfair to equate the understanding needed for the top explanation with the understanding needed to use a cryptocurrency app.

That user could have used it how other people use it.

There are a lot of things here that have nothing to do with “crypto needs to be simpler” copypasta. This particular thing was not simple and never will be unless everyone stops using it. Focus on that one thing: How to design a better smart contract? How to design a better UI for the end user? Thats a great discussion for a programming forum actually.

The user used a currency-exchanging thing, sent it a currency it shouldn't accept as input, and it swallowed his currency in stead of rejecting it.

What's "not simple and never will be" about that? Seems utterly simple to me: The currency-exchanging thing didn't work as it fucking obviously should. And the cryptards have the unmitigated gall to call this shit "smart"... Sigh. Geroffmylawn.

There is an absolute need for cleaner UX on top of this with assurance/insurance to avoid this scenario (both of which exist and are being improved regularly). In the same way you don't directly interface with SWIFT APIs when doing bank transfers, you should not interface directly with ERC20 approve/transferFrom APIs in Ethereum, unless you really know what you are doing.