What does Ethereum need to be better? According to its founder, it is all about the user experience. And on February 28, Vitalik Buterin spoke about the many problems in the Ethereum network that need to be fixed before actually solving this one.
Vitalik explained in his Blog that he faced a lot of inconvenience while using the Ethereum network to process payments due to high transaction fees, which sometimes ended up costing more than the product he wanted to pay for.
Vitalik’s problems with ETH date back to 2021
Vitalik recalled that his problems with Ethereum payments date back to 2021 when he visited Argentina and tried to pay for tea. To his surprise, the 0.003 ETH transaction was not accepted, perhaps because it was below the exchange’s minimum deposit of 0.01 ETH.
Despite this, Vitalik decided to send the 0.007 ETH needed to complete this transaction. This represented an overpayment of three times the price of the product, but he did not give importance to that charge and chose to think of it as a simple tip, realizing that it was a mistake that had to be worked on to improve the user experience.
In 2022, he learned that things haven’t changed that much. Vitalik tried to pay for tea again in another place. Gas fees prevented her from using his ETH this time, as the transaction did not go through because the receiving contract “required additional gas to process the transfer.”
Those bad experiences served as a lesson for him to understand that “simple and robust user interfaces are better than fancy and fancy ones.” He also learned that many users don’t even know what gas limits they need to process their transactions, so the defaults need to be improved.
Payment delays can be irritating for many users
Vitalik also complained about the “surprisingly long delay between my transactions”, which has been irritating as there is always the question of whose fault it is when transactions are not confirmed promptly.
“Sometimes a transaction was accepted within seconds, but other times, it would take minutes or even hours.”
He added that while the team has worked to improve these issues with the EIP-1559 update, which ensures that most transactions are accepted in the next block, there is always a risk that things won’t work perfectly because “there are still Atypical values”.
For example, if many people make transactions at the same time, there is a risk that the network will experience an increase in fees, which will result in many transactions being rejected. This issue can cause significant money losses for even the most expert users, as “wallet UIs suck at displaying this.”
Brave Wallet implemented a fix for this issue. The team listened to their suggestions and increased the maximum base fee from 12.5% to 33%, improving both the interface and the user experience.
Buterin ended his statement by indicating that, especially in the countries of the South, many people choose centralized solutions over decentralized alternatives due to how outdated the applications are in terms of user experience.
Although Ethereum Merge helped speed up the average time to process transactions, there is still a long way to go to achieve the global adoption that cryptocurrency enthusiasts dream of.
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