Variant Fund's Lian Chuang Li Jin: Web3's problems go beyond onboarding
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Variant Fund's Lian Chuang Li Jin: Web3's problems go beyond onboarding
Web3 lacks a seamless application experience that could unlock broader adoption.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Li Jin, Co-founder of Variant Fund
Translation: Block unicorn
Discussions around accelerating crypto adoption often center on improving user experience (UX). The prevailing view is that from a UX perspective, Web3 products are behind, the onboarding process has multiple friction points, and technical concepts require a learning curve—Web3 lacks a seamless application experience that could unlock broader adoption.
While improving crypto UX is indeed important, I believe a more critical and urgent barrier to adoption is building things people actually need. The issue facing Web3 is one of product-market fit, not user experience.
Product-market fit means a product meets a strong market demand. For consumer builders, the elegance and challenge of creating consumer products lies in the fact that human needs have remained remarkably consistent over time. This is why Maslow’s hierarchy of needs still resonates nearly a century later, encompassing universal needs ranging from physiological (food, shelter, clothing) to psychological (belonging, love, entertainment, esteem).
The history of consumer startups is one of continual innovation in novel ways to meet human needs. While new consumer apps are often seen as making incremental progress in relatively trivial domains—like “teens making dance videos”—in reality, successful startups provide step-function improvements in helping people fulfill core needs. Amazon sells us books (and everything else) in just a few clicks, dramatically simplifying the process of acquiring goods. Facebook enables us to instantly connect with people we care about. The number of potential real-life romantic partners pales in comparison to what Tinder offers.
There is ample evidence that when the user benefit is large enough, people are willing to overcome UX hurdles and learn new behaviors—not just in crypto, but across domains. Examples include the first-generation iPhone (without a touchscreen keyboard), the internet itself, and all major crypto assets and applications that achieved significant adoption (non-fungible tokens or NFTs during the last bull run being a prime example). For products that address core needs, unfamiliar and complex user experiences do not become barriers.
Despite the breadth of human needs, discussions about where crypto can uniquely create opportunities have so far been largely confined to finance. While income is a widespread need, income-generating products based on speculation lose appeal when markets decline. It's a hard sell, especially when users have other ways to earn income with less risk and uncertainty.
What might it look like for crypto builders to create products that better satisfy other human needs—such as belonging, community, and entertainment?
On a small scale, NFT communities and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have already met some people’s needs for belonging, creating novel social networks based on asset ownership. To those who argue that shared financial interest cannot form the basis of "real" relationships, consider how many of our real-world connections are built on ownership—whether homeowners in a neighborhood, employees at a startup, or Pokémon card collectors.
For products that meet core needs, unfamiliar and complex user experiences are not obstacles.
There is an opportunity to leverage on-chain assets as the foundation for building new communities that address needs like belonging, recognition, and connection. In August 2023 alone, 94.5 million NFTs were minted on Ethereum and its Layer 2 scaling protocols; as user activity grows, it becomes possible to infer interests from on-chain behavior and reveal rich patterns of connection based on detailed activity histories.
On-chain media expands our entertainment options, giving us skin in the game when consuming and creating online. On platforms like Sound.xyz, Friend.tech, and Zora, users can bet on media and creators they believe in, deepening their engagement with content and turning these networks into financialized games. In a world where all media starts as NFTs, there will be a new economic dimension that enriches our internet experience.
These are just the beginning steps of crypto finding product-market fit and addressing needs beyond income. From here, there remains vast room for experimentation. To achieve broad adoption and move beyond current niche markets, crypto products must enhance the human experience in ways only crypto can enable.
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