As a new decentralized exchange (DEX), we’re often asked what makes us different.

How will we increase liquidity?

How will we attract high net worth and institutional traders?

How will we encourage mass adoption?

The answer lies in creating the best user experience.

What does that mean?

For us, it means building a DEX that’s

1) easy to use.
2) reliable and trustworthy.
3) attractive to all types of investor.

Humans love simplicity. If there’s an easy option, we’ll take it. If not, we tend to give up altogether. This psychological bias is crucial to understanding how to take a blockchain project to scale.

Take Coinbase, for example. They’re the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the market. While hackers were busy stealing $345M from centralized exchanges in 2017, demand for Coinbase services increased by a factor of forty. Why?

Because Coinbase made it easy to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. They reached scale offering a simple way to buy Bitcoin, Ether, and so on using fiat.

In contrast, most blockchain applications — including some DEXs — are complicated, falling short of what we’ve come to expect from “Web 2.0”.

Blockchain has long been the domain of enthusiasts and developers, and command-line, complex interactions are, sadly, commonplace. But now, as use cases widen and blockchain becomes mainstream, we must design a user experience all customers will love or risk falling victim to our own obscurity.

Blockchain has barely scratched the surface of the multi-trillion-dollar global financial market — make trading easy, and blockchain is one step closer to mass adoption.

People expect applications to behave in a certain way. Poor UX can have significant, real world consequences — some of which are grave. Granted, a poorly-designed DEX interface is unlikely to risk lives, but it might risk a profitable trade, and will certainly dampen any efforts to reach mass adoption.

Designing around users’ expectations creates positive, intuitive experiences that can make or break loyalty with a particular product or service, unless trumped by something else. So does the Coinbase intuitive trading experience trump security? It would explain their success, but more importantly, proves again just how important it is to make trading easy for customers. For amateur traders, this could mean using plain language and visual signposting, or for institutional traders, giving the tools, data, and visual markers they’re accustomed to using on other platforms.

But a great user experience also needs trust. We’re still operating within a regulatory haze, so new projects must work harder to convince people of their value and trustworthiness. Just because a DEX is trustless, it doesn’t mean people will trust the DEX. We must reassure users every step of the way, giving the right information at the right time, in a clear and concise manner, so customers know exactly what happened, what is happening, and what to expect next.

To overcome the liquidity challenge, we need to create great user experiences that are as good as (if not better) than those offered by centralized exchanges, while still providing all the benefits of decentralization. But we want to take this a step further: What if we could also help you make better trades?

Our vision is to empower everyone, regardless of market knowledge, to trade altcoins securely and with confidence. As well as making trading easy through design-driven development and working with the community, we want to help inexperienced traders make better investment decisions. How? By including social trading in our DEX.

Social trading helps amateurs learn the ropes while making fewer rookie mistakes. Yes, those mistakes might also be part of the learning process, but for many newcomers, sudden unexpected losses can deter further participation. Instead, social trading can give amateur traders a safer start while they learn the basics, such as how to read charts, interpret white papers, and analyze industry news.

We’ve yet to see social trading in an existing DEX, and we’d love to be the first to offer it to the community. Not only will it attract and retain investors who’re just starting out, fortifying liquidity, it’ll also make trading more fun, and offer a forum for experienced, influential investors to earn rewards by sharing their expertise.

A great user experience can change a market forever. Apple’s iPhone reimagined how people interacted with their smartphones, and now almost every manufacturer has adopted their touchscreen design. In the same way, we want to rethink how the community interacts with trading exchanges. By giving a secure, fast, and above all, easy way to trade, we hope to help everyone share in the rewards of the blockchain-based economy.

Altcoin.io Team
https://www.altcoin.io/

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