Wallets like Metamask need to become more user-friendly
After the long-awaited Merge of Ethereum’s blockchain, now is a great time to think about how to make smart contracts even better. Smart contracts are a big part of the Web3 applications we use. Smart contracts are programs that run on blockchains but do not have a central server. But talking to them is still dangerous, especially if you’re not a developer. Most of the time, people lose their crypto assets because of smart contracts that are either malicious or have bugs.
As a developer of Web3 apps, I think a lot about this, especially since new users are always joining blockchain apps. Because there is no customer service hotline in the Web2 world that you can call to get your money back if something goes wrong with a transaction, a buyer needs to know precisely what a smart contract will do before fully trusting it. But right now, it’s hard to tell if a smart contract is safe and trustworthy. You can visit a reliable platform that allows users to invest in cryptocurrencies.
One idea would be to make the wallets themselves smarter. What if, for instance, smart wallets could tell us whether or not a smart contract is safe? It’s probably impossible to know for sure, but wallets could collect and show many signs developers look for. This would make the process easier for people who aren’t developers to understand and safer.
How smart contracts and wallets work for users in the modern world (UX)
Wallets like MetaMask look like they were made with developers in mind in some ways. They know a lot of technical details and small bits of information about blockchain that can be used to make apps.
People who aren’t developers use MetaMask but don’t know what everything means. No one thought Web3 would become so popular in such a short time, and wallets still don’t meet the needs of its new users.
MetaMask has already done a great job of changing the name of the “mnemonic phrase” to the “secret phrase” so that customers don’t accidentally tell cybercriminals their secret phrase. Still, many things could be improved.
Is there a public place where the contract’s source code can be found?
Most developers trust open-source contracts more because any developer can read them, and it’s easier to find bugs and bad code. MetaMask already has several connections to Etherscan, so adding this signal would be easy and save time.
Audit score. Another way to show that something is reliable is to have it checked out by a neutral third party. The biggest worry about how this will be done is how this score will be decided.
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Now that this deal has been made, what will happen?
If a smart contract doesn’t have many signs that it can be trusted, like the mock-up on the right side of the image above, the user interface could suggest a set of precautions to take, like ensuring the contract address is correct and using a different account. These tips are written in orange instead of red because a lack of signals doesn’t always mean there is a threat right away. Here, we ask that users choose to be a bit more careful about what they do next.
The user can turn these suggested features off, just like many of the features already in MetaMask.
How to go forward to make things safer in the future
Blockchains are the building blocks for many security tools that will be made in the future.
Even though Web3 apps are still new, people are already using them, so I’d love to see developers add more security to them now. But Web3 apps are already being used by consumers. With just a few simple changes, wallets could be a lot better. If some of the above ideas were implemented, it would be easier for experienced Web3 users to make transactions and safer for people new to the platform.