One of the clear challenges crypto platforms face today is bringing the standard of UX up to a level that makes mass consumer adoption a reality. But what’s the best way to go about this? How can crypto apps turn active interest into active users without requiring everyone to complete a Crypto 101 course?  Should builders insist on a baseline level of knowledge and hope most users can get there? Or should they abstract away from the complications of crypto and deliver an experience that works, even if users don’t understand exactly how?

We think of these competing options as “crypto-native” and “crypto-enabled.” Let’s explore those two approaches in more detail.

A crypto-native product is one that both assumes and requires a working understanding of crypto from the user. These products lay bare the plumbing that powers their services. They expect the user to be familiar enough with crypto to understand and evaluate the service in the context of those underlying mechanics.

This approach has enormous value–there’s a strong argument that crypto users are better prepared and better protected when they are armed with a foundational understanding of the ecosystem and the technology that powers it.

Take user security, for example. Today’s crypto users sometimes feel they’re navigating a minefield, with malicious actors laying traps at every turn. Having a baseline level of crypto knowledge can help them spot when something isn’t right and avoid unpleasant mistakes.   Beyond security, a bit of crypto savvy lets users explore the ecosystem with more agency, tailoring their activity to their interests and goals. Those who develop a basic understanding of what a smart contract is doing or what permissions they grant when signing a message are more likely to get the outcomes they want. This increase in transparency also tells the user what degree of privacy they can expect and lets them make informed decisions accordingly.

All of that is empowering. A crypto-native approach lays the foundation for a more user-driven future for the entire ecosystem–and it’s hard not to like the sound of that.

At the same time, it’s clear that a crypto-native approach also asks more of its users. There’s a case to be made that it might even be asking too much for the wave of newer adopters we all anticipate.

Thus, the crypto-enabled path: in contrast to the crypto-native philosophy, this approach intentionally moves crypto into the background. In these cases, crypto unlocks improved product experiences, working behind the scenes to make the product faster, better, or cheaper. But the user doesn’t necessarily know this. And they don’t need to: the product delivers whether or not the user has any idea or understanding of what is happening on-chain.

This approach has clear advantages, too. It can make for a delightful UX and provide a significant functional improvement over traditional rails. Indeed, the crypto-enabled approach has taken off with products that directly parallel popular apps today, such as peer-to-peer (p2p) payments. The builders of these products bet that instead of trying to educate users about crypto at the risk of losing them completely, the better play is to remove crypto from their experience and let the company manage the details behind closed doors.

And therein lies the rub. Users who do not understand how their activity intersects with crypto are more vulnerable to mistakes. The complexity inherent to crypto is where much of the risk lies, and without users knowing some fundamentals of how the product is leveraging crypto, they may be blind to hacks or abuse.

There are also downsides for more seasoned crypto users. These users may feel walled in by the decisions or assumptions that the product makes on their behalf–and they may resent the inability to kick the tires for themselves. For example, we see crypto-enabled products creating wallets in the background and not sharing the address, chain, or asset that facilitates the transfer of value. Faced with such obfuscation, crypto-native users often will balk. Whether new users will flock to products that more seasoned users have shunned might be a risk that crypto teams are not willing to take.

Of course, these tensions are not new to crypto. The same struggle defined the early days of the web when builders debated whether the average consumer would need to understand things like URLs and the difference between a POP3 and IMAP email setup. By and large, abstraction won out in that context–users ultimately traded transparency and control for simplicity and ease. Venmo doesn’t share how the $50 you sent to your friend for dinner ended up in their bank. It just happens. Why should crypto be different?

There are a couple of reasons. First, times have changed since the early days of the Internet. Then, the entire online experience was new, arriving as it did with the birth of personal computing. Today, everyone is online, carries a computer in their pocket, and generally has a higher technical proficiency.  What’s more, although we’ve landed at a high level of abstraction now, it’s important to remember that we only got here after years of collective education. And finally, perhaps most importantly, there’s still the question of what we gave up to get here. Might we all have done better navigating our new online lives if we had insisted on a higher level of digital ownership? Think of the scams, data leaks, and privacy intrusions we all could have avoided if we had.

This brings us back to the question for crypto. Today’s average internet user may not understand how Venmo works, but why should they? The technicalities don’t make much difference to them–Venmo controls all of that. But the same user migrating to crypto has more choices. They have the possibility of self-custody and interoperability across tools to be employed as they see fit. They don’t have to give up autonomy to a centralized firm just as the price of admission. Why should we make it seem as if they do?

Total abstraction might have been a good trade when centralization was necessary to navigate the internet. When that’s no longer the case, the fundamentals of that bargain begin to look a little more shaky.

The clear takeaway is that it’s not a simple choice. Neither crypto-native nor crypto-enabled will be the right solution for all products, and there will inevitably be a spectrum that each company will have to navigate.

At Meso, we don’t have all the answers either. We want to make crypto a welcoming environment for newcomers, to be sure. But also know that over-simplifying crypto makes it less powerful. For crypto’s potential to be fully realized, users must understand how crypto-based platforms differ from traditional online apps–not just functionally but also from a values-based perspective. Only when they can see those differences clearly can they evaluate how much they matter.

As with most things in life, it will have to be a balance. Crypto’s breakthrough into the mainstream will be blazed by the builders that get this balance right.