Crossing the Chasm
I’m sitting at my desk with my crypto wallet in hand. I’m preparing to mint an NFT. I triple check that I’m on the correct website, reading every letter. I sign into my wallet application. I check the Discord and Twitter for scam alerts. All good. I breathe slow, close my eyes, and sign the transaction to mint.
This was me last week. So far I’m safe with my asset, but I assume the scammers will get me some day like they have so many others.
This is the black cloud hanging over NFTs and scaring off mainstream adoption.
Crossing the Chasm
Crossing the Chasm is a famous book describing the high-tech adoption cycle, and how hard it is to cross from early adopters to mainstream users. He equates it to D-Day style risk-it-all attack.
The Early Adopters live the experience I shared above, which is clearly not suitable for mainstream users.
The Early Majority represents a much bigger market opportunity. To reach them, products need to massively lower the barrier to entry, improve security, and provide big value.
The First Waves
Dapper Labs led the D-Day charge here with TopShot, Flow, custodial wallets and fiat payments.
Unblocked is following a similar path and applying those ideas to the music industry. And many others are taking their own approach.
It’s now on us to prove web3 is ready for the mainstream.
Triple-checking websites and praying to the cybersecurity gods is not going to cut it much longer.