Tailoring UX for users spanning a wide spectrum of experience levels
In July to September 2022, a redesign of the Crypto.com DeFi Wallet onboarding streamlined the flow from 8 stages to 5. The conversion rate jumped from 29% to 59%, an unambiguous win on paper. But the simpler flow deferred wallet backup: users could now hold assets without ever seeing or backing up their recovery phrase. That trade-off raised a bigger question about what good Web3 onboarding should actually do.
Speed alone is not a useful measure of onboarding success. As the industry pushes to onboard billions into Web3, the DeFi Wallet needed to do more than compress time-to-home-screen. It needed to set users up for the complex journey ahead, not just get them to the door faster.
The study included both existing DeFi Wallet users and non-users, all within their first 3 months of exploring Web3. Two phases ran back to back: qualitative interviews to surface mental models, then a survey to validate at scale.
4 existing DeFi Wallet users and 4 non-users joined 1:1 interviews to surface motivations, mental models, and friction points as they started exploring Web3. Each session ran about 45 minutes, with a semi-structured guide to stay focused while leaving room to follow interesting leads.
A follow-up survey reached 400 existing users and 10 non-users. It validated the interview themes at scale and tested specific hypotheses about custody, fiat on-ramps, and what stopped people short of their first DeFi action.
The research surfaced three tensions the existing onboarding hadn't addressed. Each one led to a specific product opportunity the team pursued in the months after.
For new users, getting crypto in the first place is a bigger wall than creating a wallet. Without a reliable fiat on-ramp, onboarding stalls at payment, not setup. Users already active on a CeFi exchange have a shorter path into Web3, which made CeFi-to-DeFi a strategic lane to invest in.
Treat the path from Crypto.com App to DeFi Wallet as a growth lane, not cannibalization. Users already familiar with CeFi have a shorter path into Web3 and can leverage the app's mature fiat on-ramp.
Add partners like Moonpay to offer more payment methods and regions, reducing reliance on a single KYC path tied to the Crypto.com App.
Creating a wallet the first time is confusing, but new users are motivated enough to figure it out, often asking friends or searching online. The bigger risk isn't drop-off at setup, it's what they skip or defer along the way, especially recovery-phrase backup. Industry advances like Account Abstraction and MPC will help, but timing matters: security prompts need to match user readiness.
Let users explore use cases before committing to create or import a wallet, so they can see the value first and decide when to step in.
Offer cloud backup alongside paper backup, and prompt backup at moments when users actually have something to protect rather than at zero-asset wallet creation.
New users arrive with different starting points, and the research surfaced three distinct learning patterns. Progress isn't linear, and sequence matters. Each milestone needs to reinforce the next, like learning a language where you start with basics before real-world use.
Structure onboarding in sequence: introduce (wallet addresses, recovery phrases), connect (DApps, signing), then tour (chain functionalities). Each stage reinforces the next.
Redefine incentives to celebrate what users learn alongside monetary rewards, tapping into intrinsic motivation for deeper engagement.
The research became a starting point, not an endpoint. Over the following months, three initiatives shipped on the DeFi Wallet, each tracing back to a tension surfaced in the study.
Running this study end-to-end as a sole researcher taught me as much about the method as about the findings. A few things I'd carry forward, and a few I'd do differently.
