Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently published a blog post detailing the need to improve the network in order to better facilitate Ether (ETH) as a means of payment. Buterin shared his own experiences of trying to pay for tea in Argentina in 2021 and 2022, and the difficulties he encountered. He noted that even experts could be confused about how to speed up transactions in cases where the base fee is spiking up.

Buterin highlighted the importance of good user experience, saying “Good user experience is not about the average case, it is about the worst case.” He argued that a UI that is clean and sleek, but fails 0.723% of the time, is worse than a UI that exposes more gritty details to the user.

Buterin also raised the issue of unpredictable transaction times, internet reliability, and the need for possible offline proof that customers indeed transfered their transaction data directly to the merchant. He also noted the problem of losing a small amount of BTC and ETH due to secret-sharing-based off-chain social recovery methods for wallets.

Fortunately, Ethereum transaction fees have fallen to an average of $0.656 at the time of publication, which is much lower than the average of $20 witnessed during the peak of the crypto bull market in 2021. However, Buterin believes that scaling has not yet been fully solved and user experience is a key reason why many Ethereum users opt for centralized solutions instead of on-chain decentralized alternatives.

In a statement, Buterin said, “A UI that is clean and sleek, but does some weird and unexplainable thing 0.723% of the time that causes big problems, is worse than a UI that exposes more gritty details to the user but at least makes it easier to understand what’s going on and fix any problem that does arise.” He concluded by emphasizing the need to improve user experience in order to make Ethereum a viable payment option.