Onboarding New Users: How to Create Accessible Apps for all users
The transition from traditional applications to onchain finance represents a shift toward true ownership and transparency. However, for most teams, the biggest hurdle isn't the smart contracts—it’s the onboarding process. In onchain finance, onboarding is the bridge between a potential user and an active participant. To build experiences that scale, we must move past the "crypto-native" bubble and simplify the journey for those who have never touched a blockchain before.
Why Onboard Non-Crypto Natives?
While the existing crypto community is vibrant, it represents only a small fraction of the global market. To scale your platform, you must reach beyond those with technical know-how.
Reach More Users
The most obvious reason to target non-crypto natives is scale. By lowering the barrier to entry, you open your app to billions of people who are familiar with digital apps but are intimidated by crypto flows. Expanding your addressable market requires turning connectivity into usable features for everyone.
Build for Users First, Not Crypto Users
When you build specifically for "crypto users," you often inherit their tolerance for poor UX. By focusing on non-natives, you are forced to prioritize intuitive design. Building for users first means the technology stays in the background, letting the value of your app take center stage. This product-led approach leads to better products that appeal to everyone, regardless of their fluency.
Challenges of Onboarding for New Users
The "standard" crypto onboarding flow is often a gauntlet of confusing steps that lead to high drop-off rates.
Crypto Wallets
New users struggle with unfamiliar login methods. Unlike the usernames and passwords they use daily, traditional wallets require managing 12- or 24-word seed phrases. For someone used to "Forgot Password" buttons, the idea that losing a string of words means losing their account forever is a major deterrent.
Different Networks: Swapping and Bridging
The multichain ecosystem is a maze for beginners. Users often struggle to understand why they need specific tokens on one network to move assets to another. The manual process of bridging assets is one of the most significant points of friction in the user journey.
Onramping
Getting funds into an app is unnecessarily complicated. Traditionally, onramping requires users to sign up for a centralized exchange (CEX), complete a lengthy KYC process, and then figure out how to transfer assets to a self-custodial wallet. This multi-step process often takes days, killing a user's momentum.
Intuitive UX
Onchain app UX can be confusing when users are forced to go off-platform to bridge or swap. Furthermore, signing transactions can be nerve-wracking; because transactions are immutable, the fear of making a permanent mistake often prevents users from interacting with the app at all.
Top Tools for Onboarding New Crypto Users
The right tools turn these challenges into growth. Reown provides the infrastructure to make onchain interactions feel like standard web experiences.
Email and Social Logins
Reown’s Email & Social Login allows you to bring your app to a world of new users in minutes. It solves the "wallet barrier" by allowing users to connect using familiar accounts like Google, X, GitHub, Discord, Apple, Facebook, or Farcaster. Users get a Universal Wallet tied to their social identity, offering a frictionless entry point without the need for seed phrases.
Learn more about email & social logins ->
Chain Abstraction
Reown’s Chain Abstraction enables your app to facilitate seamless cross-chain transactions. It allows users to spend tokens across different blockchain networks without manually bridging tokens or worrying about network-specific gas. For example, a user can make a payment on the Base network using USDC held on Arbitrum, with Reown handling the complexity in the background.
Learn more about chain abstraction ->
In-app Onramps
Reown’s On-Ramp solution provides users access to over 100 cryptocurrencies directly within your app. By integrating with providers like Meld, it eliminates the need for users to switch between platforms. With just one line of code, you can offer a secure, in-app experience for anyone looking to transact within web3.
Smart Accounts for Human-Readable Names
Reown’s Smart Accounts offer enhanced security with features like multi-signature authorization and automated workflows. To make these accounts even more accessible, users can assign a memorable Account Name (e.g., user.reown.id) via ENS resolvers. This acts as a public alias that works across all supported networks, replacing long, unwieldy addresses with something human-readable.
Learn more about smart accounts ->
How to Onboard New Users: Step by Step
Using Reown, you can build a gold-standard onboarding flow in four simple steps:
1. Create a Seamless Login Flow
Integrate Reown’s Social Logins to let users sign in with their email or Google account. This automatically creates a Universal Wallet, providing instant access without the stress of seed phrase management or private key storage.
2. Let Users Onramp In-app
Don't send users away to fund their accounts. Use Reown’s On-Ramp features to let them purchase tokens directly within your interface. This keeps the conversion high and ensures they have the assets they need to start using your product immediately.
3. Abstract Away Complexity
Leverage Chain Abstraction so users don't have to think about networks. Reown determines if a user has sufficient funds and handles any necessary bridging transactions automatically. The user simply confirms the action, and Reown executes the move across chains.
4. Create a Seamless UX
Power your UX with Smart Accounts to remove the need for seed phrases entirely. By letting users claim a human-readable .reown.id name, you make the app feel personal and social, reducing the "technical" friction of onchain finance.
Reown: Onboarding Every User
Onboarding the next wave of users is about making sure they don't have to care how the blockchain works. By using Reown’s infrastructure, you can remove the friction of seed phrases, bridging, and off-platform onramps. Reown provides everything you need to build secure, user-friendly onchain finance flows that scale.
Launch your next onchain project with Reown and start building for the next billion users today.
