Why normal users would care about Chain?
There are few thoughts which sometimes hit me, so i try to write down them. These are not deep-dives, just my view/observation on things i found. I am trying to get back and work on long form, hopefully from next week.
read few tweets past days about why users might not care about the chain they’re interacting with and instead focus solely on the application.
It made think - If we compare crypto apps to fintech apps, there’s an interesting parallel. Using a fintech app requires a bank account, and as users, we know which bank we use & trust to hold our money. Similarly, in crypto, a user’s address on a chain acts like a bank account. So it’s natural for users to ask - Where am I holding my money? Which chain is this on?
This makes me believe that chains do matter, unless an application’s use case or utility is so compelling that it completely overshadows the chain itself. But if the app is focused on financial use cases, users will almost certainly start questioning the chain.
Take Polymarket as an example. For a Web2 user, depositing money into Polymarket feels no different than depositing into Stake(not the UX of deposit, but stance to first deposit and then be able to use it). But we (crypto native) know that in the background, Polymarket runs on Polygon.
Similarly, in fintech, a savings-focused app might ask users to choose which bank account they want to fund it with. In crypto, when depositing on Aave, users are asked to select a chain. At that moment, they naturally going to think whether their savings are safer or better on chain X or Y—and why they should make that choice.
What’s also interesting is how this mirrors traditional banking: different banks offer different interest rates, just as Aave offers different rates(APY due to market forces) across chains. Users would view both Aave and the chain as intermediaries—Aave facilitating the process and the chain acting as the custodian.
I find this perspective interesting. Don't have any conclusions yet, this thought makes me wonder if chain abstraction is more like an aggregated version of fintech apps. And I am not sure if i felt this or everyone sees it this way.
Tweet - https://x.com/iamswastik23/status/1879439127101267992, if you are looking to engage.
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