Coinbase and other crypto companies hope to boost adoption with UX

Build it and they will come, perhaps, but making crypto easier to use is turning out to be just as important

article-image

24K-Production/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Crypto companies are looking to improve their user experiences and interfaces in hopes of onboarding new customers.

Centralized crypto exchange Coinbase recently enabled users of its Wallet app to link directly to crypto payments through messaging apps, including WhatsApp, iMessage and Telegram.

“With this launch, users can now send money across borders for free using the most commonly accessible identifier – a phone number or email address – as opposed to needing to know the recipient’s wallet address,” Chintan Turakhia, Coinbase senior director of engineering told Blockworks.

“By reducing complexity while expanding global access, we hope to enable millions of new people to engage with the crypto economy.”

Sending crypto is free and settled instantly, Coinbase said. Recipients will have up to two weeks to claim the money sent to them before they are returned to the sender. 

Loading Tweet..

Turakhia said Coinbase believes the best way to increase economic freedom is by simplifying the payment experience.  

Decentralized crypto trading platform Matcha meanwhile recently enabled cross-chain swaps across seven blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, BSC and Avalanche.

This means that Matcha users will be able to swap tokens across various blockchains without having to leave the Matcha interface or visit a separate bridging site.

Safety remains a barrier to crypto adoption

With improvements like these, the crypto space may find it easier to introduce users to their products.

But lacking trust in crypto is still a chief concern. Ido Ben-Natan, the co-founder and CEO of Blockaid, notes that a crucial part of the UX narrative will be improved user security.

“Survey after survey shows that one of the key barriers to entry for web3 users is the perception that it’s easy to get scammed,” Ben-Natan told Blockworks.

In fact, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, over 75% of Americans in the US who have heard of crypto remain skeptical of its safety and reliability. 

Of the Americans who do hold cryptocurrencies, the majority of them (74%) first purchased crypto between one and five years ago, with only a handful (16%) having decided to purchase crypto over the past year.

An estimated 31% of traders who have previously purchased or traded crypto no longer own any.

“For peer-to-peer payments to flourish globally, we need to make it easy for users to stay safe. This is why we’re laser-focused on working with the largest wallet providers to protect users globally from malicious actors,” Ben-Natan said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday