Mobile DeFi and the Shift Toward Self-Sovereignty

To bridge the gap between convenience and security, our industry must place greater emphasis on user experiences and familiar tools to ease a consumer's mentality shift.

The rise of mobile and the crypto floodgateSmartphones were supposed to open up a world of autonomy that had never been seen before.

When the financial interests of those in power are misaligned with the users, the sovereignty of the users is trampled - as was the case when last month when the Brazilian Central Bank shut down WhatsApp Payments throughout the country.

Crypto, DeFi and decentralized applications promise to fulfill the original vision of our connected future, in which users could retain absolute ownership of their funds as they transacted in a global market.

The rise of stablecoins, DeFi lending protocols and crypto ATMs across the world are signs of a growing consciousness of the potential this technology could provide to our daily lives.

Building bridgesAdoption of cryptocurrencies thus far has been in spite of - as opposed to because of - user experience.

While some crypto mobile applications have clean user interfaces, the collective user experience remains daunting to new people joining the market.

Hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor were groundbreaking first steps in user custodianship, but their user experience still remains tricky for crypto newbies, and more importantly, the hardware is intended for use with a desktop or laptop computer.

In a world becoming rapidly more and more mobile, what good is a USB-like hardware wallet for storing my private keys offline if users will be regularly transacting on a mobile device?

The key here is offering familiar experiences in line with best practices in crypto security so that the difficult but absolutely necessary shift in mentality is made more palatable.