Crypto wallets have a ‘batshit crazy’ language
barrier that's putting users at risk
'Are you sure you want to do that?'
It's a prompt you'll hear from:
Your good friends, at the end of the night, when you say you want to 'get a kebab to eat in bed.'
Clippy, when you rage quit Microsoft Word without saving, because your Charlie Munger x Warren Buffet fan fiction just isn't flowing right.
Just about any payment app when trying to send/accept money.
In regards to that last one, it gives payment providers the option of saying 'hey, we asked,' if you end up accepting or sending payments you shouldn't have.
In the case of MetaMask (one of the world's most popular crypto wallets), the community have felt for a while now, that these warning prompts weren't clear enough.
And it makes sense...
There's been a rash of scammers, posing as trusted accounts - not only requesting simple payments, but complete access and control over peoples coins and NFTs.
Imagine if someone were to request access to all of your bank accounts...you'd expect some pretty clear and heavy language to be shown before you accepted the prompt.
Hell, maybe even a call from your bank?
In Web3, that's not going to happen - there's no third party security - it's just you, and the apps you use.
That's why clear language and user friendly systems are so important.
To quote Brenden Mulligan, founder of Premint:
“This is a solvable problem, but it’s batshit crazy that it’s so easy to drain a wallet and there aren’t more warnings in place to protect people.”
Yesterday, MetaMask took a good first step towards clarifying the language surrounding these sorts of permissions, here's a before (right image) and after (left image):
It's thousands of small but effective tweaks like this that are required to solve Web3's usability problem.
And for taking that first step, we say:
Bravo, MetaMask.
