Crypto needs to eliminate friction for the next billion users: Coinbase

Bringing the first billion major cryptocurrencies to the blockchain will first require startup-friendly apps.

The current user onboarding process is complicated and full of friction points, which is a major issue in mass crypto adoption, said Chintan Thurakia, senior director of engineering at Coinbase.

Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph at EthCC, Turakia said:

If our goal is to bring in the next billion users—and let's start with just 100 million—we need to iron out all of these friction points.

Some of the more pressing points of friction include setting up a complex seed-level wallet, paying transaction fees, and buying blockchain-native tokens to trade on the network.

Coinbase is the world's second largest centralized crypto exchange by volume, with a daily transaction volume of $1.86 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

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Coinbase Smart Wallet could be Neobank's competitor.

To bolster mass adoption, Coinbase recently launched its smart wallet, packed with beginner-friendly features.

The new wallet replaces complex logins with simple login options like usernames and passcodes, which can be a payment requirement, Turakia says:

“The things that a lot of us in the industry are used to paying for gas, with a native token… that's not a common set of logic when you're trying to pay for a cup of coffee.

To further simplify the onboarding process, gas payments on the new wallet are supported by the Coinbase exchange.

The wallet is available on the Ethereum mainnet and on all blockchains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

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Consumer apps are the “road to mass adoption”.

Consumer applications with potential for everyday use, which are being improved by blockchain technology, will be the path to mass adoption, according to Turakia. He explained.

“The path to mass adoption is consumer apps… something fun, something that sounds technical or crypto but is actually fun.”

One app promoting mass crypto adoption is the Telegram-based mini-game Hamster Kombat, which surpassed 239 million users in just 81 days.

Telegram's mini app has 4 million-5 million new users every day, making it one of the fastest-growing digital services in the world, Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov said.

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