DEAR MOCA: Why Do Crypto Wallets Suck So Bad?

In so many words

Please today’s DEAR MOCA column. Have questions you’d like answered? Email us at hello@museumofcryptoart.com or submit your questions to our dedicated Google Form.

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Dear MOCA,

No static 

Our wallet in many ways

mirror our individuality 

as well as my commonality

Sincerely,

Hipsey Nussle

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Dear MOCA,

Wallet tech is so bad in general, and wallets like Metamask don’t really create any new advancements that might make it easier for people to start using crypto in a way that is accessible. Wallets are in some ways the most fundamental part of collecting crypto and crypto art. Why isn’t more being done to make self-custodial wallets more accessible and more widely-known?

Sincerely,

Financially Responsible

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Dear Financially Responsible and Hipsey Nussle,

Yes, only one of your submissions was a question, the other being a short poem, but they together address one of the fundamental issues with current-stage crypto art. Wallets are failing us. And I’m not going to direct this entirely at Metamask —although, being an industry leader, they deserve a lion’s share of the blame for continuing to offer an unsexy, difficult to maneuver, non-dynamic product— because the wallet issue applies to products like Phantom on Solana, Temple Wallet on Tezos; basically whenever I see a wallet in use, it’s a version of the same thing: Some kind of rectangular browser extension where a dollar figure greets you, a number of non-standard icons assault you, and like in some Soulslike videogame, you are left to figure out the rest by your damn self. 

Now Hipsey, without wanting to explain away your poem, it seems to me that you’re commenting on how the contents of one’s wallet, in terms of the tokens or NFTs held, is both that which makes you unique and also that which ties you to everyone else in this ecosystem. Which is true: Your wallet is a reflection of you, and what you like, and what makes you tic, and what you believe in (art, tokens, otherwise). But it is also our universal passport into the blockchain world; we all have one. We have to have one. They’re mail-issue, standard-order, one-size-fits-all.

Now consider Financially Responsible’s question. When I set about trying to explain crypto art to some uninitiate, the last thing I’m tempted to use in my ensuing demonstration is my crypto wallet. Why? Because introducing someone to crypto —let alone crypto art— is already an uphill battle against incredulity. And navigating a wallet is so difficult and unruly, it sometimes makes me incredulous about crypto, and I’m a literal crypto museum! 

We spend so much time caring about and collecting crypto art. And yet when we open our wallets, even if we could easily navigate to the tab with our NFTs, we’d find them sequestered in tiny little boxes, usually lacking any animation or interactivity that might be coded into the piece itself. We expend so much energy investing in the right tokens, managing risk vs. reward (albeit with drastically different calculuses, but you get my meaning), but should we want to look at our tokens, we’ll first have to integrate into the wallet itself through an entirely arcane and difficult process. Then we’re treated to only the basest possible information: It’s current dollar-figure, it’s 24-hour price change. 

And that’s just the interface.

My father (who is also a sentient art museum) lost a fair amount of money in the FTX crash. I had been telling him for weeks to get his funds the hell out of a centralized exchange and into a custodial wallet so that he could have actual ownership of his funds. He didn’t, of course, but why didn’t he?

A few of the reasons he mentioned:

1. The technology was complicated.

2. People get scammed with these wallets all the time.

3. He was worried he would lose access if his computer died.

4. He didn’t understand why it was even necessary. Surely a giant corporation could be trusted to safeguard his assets more than this janky-ass Chrome extension I was telling him to download. 

And that was like a year ago! Since then, have any of these issues really been addressed? Are wallets still cumbersome and complicated to use? Yes. Do people still have their wallets drained regularly? Yes. Can you access your assets if you lose your computer? Yeah, but, like, it seems difficult as hell. But the most important question is this: Do we have anywhere else to turn? Not as far as I know.

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Here’s how I imagine the ideal wallet experience: 

First: You download your wallet from a trusted company with many satisfied user testimonials, and the very first thing you see is a bright and cheery welcome video WITHOUT ANY MENTION OF “GM” OR “WAGMI” OR ANY WEIRD CRYPTO TWITTER TOUCHSTONES. Throughout its 5-10 minute runtime, you are told why a custodial wallet is the smartest choice for engaging with blockchain. You are told allllll about the wallet’s many built-in safety features, most of which exist on the back-end, but which are still prominently discussed because wallet safety is the most important single issue in crypto.

Second: You see the the wallet interface, which is bright and thoughtful and easy to navigate, and you are shown step-by-step what all the offerings are, how they work, and why you might find them useful. The interface —kind of like how the Iphone will show you a thoughtfully-collected mixture of your photographs each day— displays a visually-appealing and ever-changing mix of your assets and NFTs. If you have animated and interactive NFTs, you can see them fully-formed from within the app; you can launch them as individual files because this wallet understands their aesthetic importance of what they are, and it should be the place not only where you access them but where you admire them. If you go to check on your tokens, it shows you relevant information and news, like literally any stock-ticker. If you want to use the more complex financial tools available, they are not centered but off to the side, and they come with their own walkthroughs all built into the app itself.

Third: When you interact with a smart contract, you are not given a freakin’ blockhash to pretend you can decipher, you are given a direct assessment of all the things that this interaction will do to your wallet. You may see a message like “Hey, are you sure you want to give this random website the ability to take Ethereum out of your wallet without further approval?” or “Hey, this smart contract is clearly designed to drain your wallet, but you may not realize, so let’s make perfectly sure that you want to proceed,” and then it asks you for permission five more times so that only the biggest possible dipshits wind up with their precious assets drained away by some semi-sophisticated scammer. 

Okay, but why am I describing the ideal wallet experience? I mean, yes, obviously it’s because without these things, without safety features and aesthetic considerations and ease-of-use, few outsiders are going to venture further into crypto or crypto art like we desperately need them to. 

But also to Hipsey Nussle’s point: The Wallet itself is akin to your face. It contains your essence: What you find important, what you find beautiful, what you put your time and money into. That’s what the thing is at its core: It is a marker of you. And the wallet itself should feel like you. It should not feel sterile. It should not remove your self-expression but exalt it! Your wallet should be your go-to place to understand yourself. Every time someone visits Opensea to view their NFTs, an angel loses its wings. There is no reason why the incredible technological advancements in UI/UX design, sophisticated aesthetic software, smart contract interaction, and personalization available elsewhere are not applied to every single major crypto wallet. 

And until then, we are going to continue to suffer! We’re going to have to use all manner of different apps if we want to fully appreciate the art we’ve collected. Or even worse —*shudders*— we’ll have to continue using Opensea. 

The blockchain world will continue to appear inhospitable and dangerous to people who aren’t familiar with it, and you know what, they’ll be right! It is inhospitable and dangerous, even to the most sophisticated of blockchain junkies.

The self-expression we crave will continue to be treated as secondary to economics. 

And, perhaps worst of all, if wallets continue to do the bare minimum, crypto art as a downstream of crypto itself could calcify; fewer and fewer people feeling safe here, fewer and fewer people able to feel celebratory in their collection here. If Twitter is a hellhole, and it is, and if our wallets are too, we’re going to need to travel further and further, expending greater and greater energy, to find what we seek. And I wouldn’t blame anyone who decides to shed that weight. It isn’t getting any lighter.

The wallet issue is as existential as it gets for the blockchain world. Our cries have induced little progress, and I am disappointed that no architect for newness has stepped forward to claim the crown we so fervently want to give them. 

A gentleman named Armani Ferrante did launch a Solana-based wallet called Backpack a while back, and that has some interesting features. It can play videos and offer storefront integrations within the app itself. It has animations and interactions encoded directly. But it is still just a wallet. And I want something more. I want something that makes me feel excited to be here as soon as I launch it.  

But excitement often seems to be in short supply. And a desire to rectify that issue even shorter. 

-Sincerely Your Friendly Neighborhood Art Museum,

MOCA