Above all else, I will always advocate for the most widely accessible experiences possible.

Have you ever spent over a decade working on and learning about digital technology, the whole time trying to prove to yourself and everyone around you that you belong in the industry? Clawed your way from web producer to project manager to product manager, dabbling in different technologies and mediums to gain as much knowledge as you possibly can?

Have you ever gone through all of that, put a few years of therapy under your belt, and finally felt like you could acknowledge that you belong in the tech industry just as much as anyone else, only to stumble into crypto and Web3 and find a whole new technological world to explore?

Buckle up for a surprise: I have!

For some context, my first passion was TV, which I studied in college. I thought I’d be a big shot Hollywood writer, but the tl;dr is that life happened and I wound up pursuing a career in tech instead. I mention this because it relates directly to how I found Web3 through Adim, a blockchain based collaborative storybuilding platform. Prior to Adim I had no desire to investigate anything related to crypto.

In the 2010s my chronically online self heard about Bitcoin. I later watched from afar as NFTs popped off. I never formed an interest in learning more since I was just like the rest of the world, eventually linking Bitcoin to QAnon and seeing NFTs only as a pyramid scheme. I didn’t do my own research, and to be completely honest, I had no desire to Know More Things. I was entirely burnt out from trying to prove my worth in other digital realms.

Fast forward a few years.

I fell back into my hobby of writing scripts and sought out online groups to keep myself accountable. I saw a TikTok about Adim one night and it sounded like exactly what I was looking for. I investigated a bit, submitted an application (a blurb about my favorite character), and forgot about it entirely, as one does. I eventually received an email with my acceptance, an invite to their Discord community, and a brand new NFT of my “Adim Pass.”

Discord?! Isn’t that for gaming nerds? Yes. And it turns out that it’s also for crypto nerds.

I downloaded Discord and found my way to their channel, and from there I kind of blacked out. I was out of my depth. I needed to claim the NFT, but to do that I first needed a wallet. OK, but what’s a wallet and where do I get one?

I blindly followed suggestions for using MetaMask, and I vaguely remember following enough instructions that I finally had what I needed, or at least I thought I did. Having worked with users in a support capacity in the past myself, I tend to try to figure out as much as I can on my own before requesting help. I acknowledge that’s a “me” issue, but I know I’m not alone.

We’re millennials; we don’t talk to strangers if we can help it.

I finally had my wallet. I had my Adim pass. I had Discord. All I needed to do was connect and verify.

It didn’t work.

At that point, I didn’t have it in me to troubleshoot any further, so I tossed my hands in the air and waved my white flag. Discord: 1; Annie: 0.

Luckily the Adim team took pity on me and sought me out to see if they could assist. They got me on a call to talk through each step with such kindness and patience that I knew that the painful onboarding process would be worth it. I was absolutely correct, and yet I was still embarrassed about my inability to complete the steps on my own.

Looking back, I no longer feel that embarrassment. I’ve since learned the difficulty of purchasing, bridging, and swapping crypto. I accidentally drained my own funds on gas fees because I wasn’t paying attention. I hit my head against a wall trying to understand why the ETH in my wallet wasn’t enough to cover a transaction, only to realize the gas fee was more expensive than the transaction itself. I’ve tried different wallets for different purposes, and I learned about wallet hygiene (thank you, SheFi!), which itself is a process. Necessary, but time consuming. I have imported tokens and NFTs after panicking that they were lost, only to realize that I didn’t see them in a particular wallet because it required a manual process, not automagic.

Grateful to know that it wasn’t just me, I couldn’t see how any project out there could possibly “onboard the next billion users to Web3” with such a fragmented experience.

Fast forward one more time: embedded wallets have entered the chat!

In my very humble opinion, embedded wallets are a major unlock in terms of introducing the average internet frequenter to blockchain technology. They don’t even need to know they’re interacting with a blockchain in any capacity, the same way they don’t need to know the coding language in which a website or application was written. Nor do they care, from my personal learnings.

That’s why I am so excited about projects like Capsule. Their team is doing incredible things for end users, and everyone should care. The dream future is interoperability, security, privacy, and decentralization, right? We can’t get there unless we begin building those foundations today and account for the wider population outside of this niche corner of Twitter.

Capsule allows for single sign-on, and can leverage social or email logins. That means that someone can have the security of passkeys without the hassle of wallet maintenance. On top of that, users can leverage the SSO across apps that aren’t even integrated with Capsule. That sounds positively dreamy!

Now, compare that to my onboarding experience. Had I been able to simply use my email or a social login, it would have saved me loads of time, frustration and even embarrassment.

Web3 is inherently an intimidating culture to shove your way into. I had to wave farewell to my desire to appear perfectly put together and I dove in with a public facing persona of “I’m here to learn.” The majority of internet users, even those who love and work with digital technology, don’t want to go through that. I know this because, much like everyone else in the space, all I seem to talk about with people these days is crypto. (That’s a joke, but also not really a joke.)

My trials and errors - many, many errors - have gotten me to the other side of that pesky imposter syndrome that initially threatened to come back in full force. However, I am keenly aware that this isn’t a “me” issue, but a systemic issue due to technological constraints, paired with the fact that We’re Still Early.

We hear folks embedded in this culture griping about experiences that are not entirely decentralized, or they refer to projects as “Web2.5” in a derogatory manner - and while they might not be wrong, the attitude is not inclusive of a broad spectrum of digital consumers. The individual who casually interacts with the internet should not be expected to follow a 20-step process to purchase an NFT just for the sake of supporting a decentralized future. They are purely looking for experiences that are simple, useful, and possibly entertaining or exciting.

Want to hear my favorite part? Adim’s fancy new platform now allows for email sign-up, meaning a wallet is not required. We love a full circle moment!

Embedded wallets are one small step for decentralization, one giant leap for onboarding the next however many users we are touting these days to Web3.

LFG, etc. 🚀