Over fifteen years since its inception, Bitcoin has undergone remarkable transformation, not just in its technological underpinnings but also in its user experience (UX) that consequently enabled its spread and adoption on a much global scale. The initial whitepaper's vision of a decentralized, peer-to-peer electronic cash system was met with initial scepticism due to its perceived complexity and technical barriers that limited its initial use to IT developers and technocrats. However, driven by the continuous efforts of bitcoin developers, entrepreneurs, and designers, Bitcoin's UX has evolved significantly, making it more accessible and user-friendly.
The original Bitcoin protocol, with its focus on decentralization and security, always prioritized technical robustness over scalability and ease of use. This led to a steep learning curve for new users, who were required to grapple with complex concepts like public and private keys, digital signatures, and on-chain transactions. Early wallets were often rudimentary and lacked intuitive interfaces, further hindering user adoption. But that was part of the internet experience too... luckily, things changed and will continue to evolve!
Furthermore, in response to these challenges, developers began to introduce innovations aimed at specifically improving Bitcoin's scalability and UX has been an important field to support this change. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were developed to provide a more visual and accessible way to interact with the blockchain, simplifying the process of sending, receiving, and managing bitcoin. More secure online wallets emerged, offering a convenient and user-friendly alternative to managing and storing private keys.
A significant step forward came with the introduction of light clients, which allowed users to connect to the Bitcoin network without downloading the entire blockchain. This greatly reduced the storage and bandwidth requirements, making Bitcoin more accessible to individuals with limited computing resources.
The rise of smartphones and mobile apps opened up new possibilities for Bitcoin's UX, providing a seamless and convenient way to store, send, and receive bitcoin on the go. And to further enhancing Bitcoin's accessibility in case of apocalypse or network censorship, someone also designed a way to bypass all that by sending bitcoin via radio! We are yet far away to scale bitcoin adoption with airwaves, the idea of having offline transactions has already been slowly disappearing because there's no demand for it and the priories are focus on taking other directions.
Nowadays, layer-2 solutions significantly contribute to the Bitcoin ecosystem by addressing scalability and transaction speed issues. They expand Bitcoin's utility beyond a store of value to a more versatile, functional cryptocurrency capable of supporting complex applications and systems. They all spawned a wide range of innovative services, including decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces. These DApps offer a user-friendly and decentralized alternative to traditional financial services. And if they exist, means that there's a demand for it!
After many intents since 2015, the Lightning.Network has further revolutionized Bitcoin's UX by enabling fast, low-cost transactions off-chain becoming operational around 2018. This breakthrough eliminated the need to wait for confirmations on the main blockchain, making Bitcoin more suitable for everyday payments and micropayments. Others are trying to challenge that same problem with a different approach, and may some day we'll see the ark that we are all waiting for during a flood season.
Later in 2016, @GiacomoZucco ideates the BHB Network as a “non-blockchain based asset system” basing on earlier ideas of @PeterTodd about client-side-validation and single-use-seals and implemented as original MVP around 2017. It later became the RGB Protocol, a scalable & confidential smart contracts system for Bitcoin & lightning network that embrace concepts of private & mutual ownership, abstraction and separation of concerns and represent "post-blockchain", Turing-complete form of trustless distributed computing which does not require introduction of "tokens".
Sice 2020, Stacks indeed challenged the use of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) on Bitcoin. Like no others, it also doesn't alter the original Bitcoin blockchain but extends its functionality, enabling developers to innovate while leveraging Bitcoin's robust network.
In parallel, we start seeing some applications that further challenge the use of Bitcoin on different tangents. The fact is that we are in a free market and everyone is free to utilise the technology in the most needed or wanted way. We recently noticed the increase non-fungible tokens on Bitcoin, known as ordinals, together with all the fud, noise, dilemma and debate that it created. Does it really matter? Probably not, util we stay focus we need to enable creativity o all directions. Exploring ad experimenting has been the way to fail and try again, learning from our mistakes and improving our skills and knowledge for the next round of innovation.
Bitcoin's UX journey has been accompanied by a growing focus on accessibility and education. People for any industry is today working hard to support its adoption and build educational resources to teach people about Bitcoin and its potential benefits for a personal use but also for communities. ~Fedimint, for example, has been the pioneer building, with a strong foundation of privacy, a modular open source protocol to custody and transact bitcoin in a community context.
Many other teams and independent developers have been, and continue, working on creating wallets and interfaces that are more accessible to users, globally. But the need to satisfy bitcoin related experiences go over Ui and all these efforts are crucial for ensuring that Bitcoin remains inclusive and accessible to a wider audience.
Let's think about how architects are envisioning the experience of living in a bitcoin-centred urban landscape, and how future financial product will be designed to satisfy an either wider audience in need of profiting from the use of this technology. All the efforts made on the financial industry have come to surface with the launch of the much expected volcano bonds and the recent approval of multiple exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the US, a first opportunity for many large organizations and wealth managers to get indirect access (without self-custody) to this technology. Finally, Bitcoin is beginning to become a benchmark asset for the younger generation, something that many of us that does not like taking risk on a too-volatile asset has been waiting for years.
But hey! Tick tock next block, Bitcoin continues to evolve, and block by block its UX is likely to undergo further refinement and innovation. The development of more intuitive product and services, the integration with emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) simulating the Spirit of Satoshi and machine learning (ML) to might help predict the future, and all the not-yet-existing creations of more engaging human experiences are all areas of potential growth.
The future is obviously unknown, and we are here to shape it together, with the potential to make this peaceful revolutionary technology more accessible and user-friendly than ever before. For what I can tell, today challenges are about solving complexity of it use and enabling accessibility to continue attracting new users and fulfil its promise of a decentralized, borderless, and user-centric financial system.
Our journey to explore the intersection of Bitcoin technology and design that could apply to products and services adopting it, just began. We invite you to join us in shaping the future of Bitcoin the way you want to see it, because your contributions are valuable, in any of the fields we could imagine today and the ones that might emerge in the future.
Here are some ways you can contribute to the SN ~Design territory:
- Share your thoughts on the latest Bitcoin innovations. What are you excited about? What are the product or services that make your Bitcoin journey easier? What do you think needs improvement?
- Discuss the challenges and opportunities of designing for Bitcoin. The Bitcoin.Design community did a great job defining some open source guiding principles everyone can contribute to. However, technology evolve and the question remains open: how can we make Bitcoin more accessible and user-friendly for everyone?
- Share your own Bitcoin UX designs. Don't be a shy turtle, we'd love to see your work here.
- Collaborate with other members of the community on design projects. There's a lot we can achieve when we work together.
Because only together, we can make Bitcoin a more user-friendly, accessible, and widely adopted technology.
lnsymmetry, not sure if I'm missing some reference... can you point me to the right material to look?