Crypto wallet UX, designed by someone who's actually shipped one.
Most Web3 designers have never tested with a first-time crypto user. I ran 14 of those tests for Enrichplay and watched the same patterns kill onboarding over and over — seed-phrase confusion, gas-fee panic, network-mismatch errors, jargon-induced paralysis.
Hire me if you're building a wallet, a DEX, a yield product, or any Web3 thing that real (non-crypto-native) humans need to use. I bring patterns from shipped work, not tutorial-grade case studies.
What I focus on in crypto UX.
The screen everyone hides — but the one that determines whether your user can ever come back. I treat seed phrases like a passport, not a password.
Chain switching, multi-chain balance views, network mismatch errors. Designed to hide complexity from new users while giving power-users full control.
Pending → confirming → confirmed → failed. Real-time visibility into the gas market, retry flows, and gas-bumping for stuck transactions.
Most wallets display gas as a number. I display it as "this transaction will cost roughly $X to send" — with clear breakdown if asked.
Tested with 14 first-time crypto users — explain WHY before HOW, hide chain selection by default, translate jargon at the boundary, never inline.
Crypto is unforgiving — once you sign, it's gone. I design recoverable mistakes (typo in amount, wrong contact) with multiple confirms, irreversible ones (sending to wrong address) with the highest friction.
First-timer UX vs power-user UX — same screen, different defaults.
The biggest mistake in crypto UX is designing one product for two audiences. First-time users need defaults that hide complexity and explain trade-offs in plain language. Power users need the same screens to expose chain selection, nonce management, and gas-priority controls without a context switch.
From Enrichplay: we shipped an “Advanced” toggle that, once enabled, surfaced multi-chain, nonce, and gas controls inline. Default off. The first-time onboarding never saw it. Power users flipped it on once and never had to think about it again.
| Screen | First-timer default | Power-user default |
|---|---|---|
| Send screen | Pick contact → confirm | Address book + chain + nonce visible |
| Gas fee | "~$0.42 to send" | Slow / Avg / Fast + custom gwei |
| Chain | Hidden (default chain) | Chain selector inline |
| Transaction list | "Confirmed 2m ago" | Block + hash + nonce shown |
| Recovery | iCloud-encrypted by default | Manual seed-phrase backup |
How we can work together.
Heuristic audit of your existing wallet UX. Prioritized list of issues + recommended fixes. Optional: 5-person user test on the worst flow.
End-to-end wallet UX from onboarding to settings. Multi-chain support, recovery flow, transaction states, dev handoff. User-tested with first-time crypto users.
Reserved hours for an ongoing crypto product. Feature design, edge cases, error states, network-mismatch flows. Priority response for incident UX work.
Crypto-specific questions.
Enough to design for them. I can read Solidity at a "what does this function do" level, work with engineering to surface contract states in UI, and design for ERC-20 / ERC-721 / ERC-1155 patterns. I'm not a smart-contract auditor — pair me with one for the contract design.
Very different. Custodial = treat it like a fintech app (account recovery via email, customer support). Non-custodial = the user IS the bank — every UX decision multiplied by 10x because there's no support to bail them out. I've shipped both.
Recruit through UserInterviews.com with screener questions ("Have you ever owned crypto? No"). Pay them in fiat, not crypto. Watch them try to send $5 worth of USDC to a real address — most users get stuck at gas, network selection, or address confirmation. From Enrichplay: I ran 14 first-time tests over 2 weeks.
Common pattern. The trick is hiding the Web3 layer from users who don't care (sign-in with email, paymaster covers gas) while exposing it to power users who do. I've designed dual-mode UX where the same screen serves both audiences.
Some, yes — auction flows, minting, listing, gallery views. I haven't done a full NFT marketplace end-to-end, but the patterns transfer from e-commerce + Painted Juttay (auction flows). I'll be upfront if it's a stretch.
A focused redesign of a single flow (recovery, onboarding, send) is 2-3 weeks. End-to-end wallet design (everything from onboarding to settings) is 6-10 weeks. I scope per-project after the discovery call.