Nostr Web Client

If I wasn’t working on ecash, I’d be working on making seed phrases obsolete. They’re the worst possible UX imaginable.

"Hey, we have the best engineered money in human history…but before you can use it, you have to grab a piece of paper and write down 12 random words. BTW if anyone ever finds this paper, they can steal your money forever."

Deeply unserious UX.

I think seed phrases are the best solution we have right now. But it’s naive and short sighted to think they’ll remain the standard for self custody / backup, or that we can’t design something 10x better and just as secure.

Trazyn 4mo ago

It's crazy, humans have never had to remember important things like this before.

Except, names

Addresses

phone numbers

Safe combinations

Email addresses

passwords

I could go on.

Instead of trying to fix the UX, we should be educating people on novel ways to take personal responsibility and commit things like this to memory.

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Discussion

Leo Wandersleb 4mo ago

None of your examples is close to as important as your seed phrase if you have a meaningful amount of BTC.

Names ... I forget all the time. Yeah, it sucks but not the end of the world.

Addresses ... I know people that found home only after the police picked them up but they found home.

Phone numbers ... who remembers phone numbers nowadays?

Safe combinations ... if you forget your safe combination, you still will get in eventually.

Email addresses ... boring.

Passwords ... most passwords are recoverable. You just have to convince somebody that you're entitled to access that account. Full disk encryption is an exception here but that's very technical, so most people don't use that.