Why Is Your Crypto Product Unused? The Answer After 500 Pitfalls

Original Title: Mistakes to avoid while building in consumer crypto

Original Author: @rishotics

Original Compilation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: In the crypto industry, the debate about "whether to build infrastructure" and "whether technical complexity equals competitive moat" never stops. However, this article provides a counter-example from a frontline entrepreneur: from consecutive failures betting on infra to pivoting towards a consumer-grade product that people are genuinely willing to use and pay for, the author uses personal experience to review the real difficulty of "building products" in crypto.

Compared to technical complexity and grand narratives, the article focuses more on users, distribution, and execution details. In the consumer crypto space, value isn't "proven," it's "earned through use."

The following is the original text:

As a first-time founder, I spent years on three infrastructure protocols, all of which ultimately failed. By 2025, I pivoted to building a consumer-grade product that people actually want to use. This piece shares the lessons I learned about user growth and fundraising "after stepping into pitfalls."

I've been in this industry for about 4 years.

In 2023, I started my venture in the EVM ecosystem, right when "account abstraction" was the hottest topic. Almost everyone was building SDKs for account abstraction wallets. Meanwhile, the Rollup ecosystem heated up rapidly. Optimism, Arbitrum, and various RaaS projects dominated the mainstream view.

As someone who loves math, I was deeply fascinated by ZK, believing it would change the world (I still believe it eventually will).

A core mistake I made back then was: equating "complexity" with "credibility."

When VCs asked about use cases, I would confidently list directions like zkML, zk identity, zk voting—yet, in reality, almost none of these are truly used even today. I mistook "the technology looks impressive" for "this is a useful product."

Over time, I even started to believe: the more complex the idea, the higher the chance of startup success.

Many investors also told me that in crypto, only infrastructure has a chance to succeed. It wasn't until nearly two years and over 500 rejections later that I realized: this path wasn't for me.

So, I entered the Solana ecosystem.

For me, it was a whole new world. People here care about actual use cases. Even if it's a meme, revenue matters. Speed matters. Distribution matters. (Special thanks to @superteamin for their help along the way.)

So far, we've been building consumer apps in this ecosystem for nearly 7 months. During the private beta, we've already processed over $12 million in transaction volume. Below are some of my summarized learnings:

1. Build for Young Users Willing to Try New Things

Try to design your product for a demographic that is naturally more receptive to new products.

In consumer crypto, this often means "trenchers" or younger users, many concentrated in the 13–21 age range.

In 2024, a study by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) on Gen Z (11–26 years old) showed: 86% of Gen Z believes technology is an indispensable part of life, a higher proportion than any older demographic. They adopt new technologies earlier, own an average of 13 devices per household, use about 6 of them daily, with usage time nearing 12 hours.

Gen Z is also more likely to personally own emerging tech products, such as crypto apps (e.g., 58% own gaming consoles, a significantly higher rate than older groups). They have stronger spending willingness on new tech, subscribe to more services, and their habits change and experimentation speed is noticeably faster than Millennials, Gen X, or Boomers.

They are more willing to try new apps, experiment, and quickly change usage habits.

In contrast, older users (in many cases, 25+) are generally less willing to change established workflows unless incentives are very strong. Note: If you're building for institutions, this conclusion may not apply.

Multiple studies also show clear behavioral differences: younger users engage in social communication with more people daily, meaning they are more likely to share "interesting products they discover" with friends. Around ages 20–21, social messaging activity typically peaks, closely tied to college or being in school.

Relevant research provides further evidence supporting this. For example, the paper "Age-related differences in social media use, online social support, and depressive symptoms in adolescents and emerging adults" points out that after entering early adulthood, an individual's frequency of social media interaction gradually declines.

This trend leads to a very direct insight: products designed for younger users inherently possess stronger virality.

2. Make the Product Itself Shareable to Reduce Marketing Costs

If you don't have ample marketing or advertising budgets, then your product itself must serve as the "distribution channel."

In other words, the product is the marketing, the product is the distribution.

A product with strong shareability can significantly reduce marketing costs.

This is especially important in crypto because:

· KOL marketing is expensive

· User trust is generally low

· Most users expect rewards or incentives before participating

In this environment, relying on traditional marketing methods is often inefficient, while organic, product-driven distribution is more sustainable.

User Direct Messages (DMs)

If your product can give users a reason to share spontaneously, whether with friends, groups, or communities, you can achieve distribution effects without burning through a lot of capital.

This isn't easy to do in crypto, but optimizing for it from day one is very worthwhile in the long run.

3. Respond to User Feedback ASAP

When users report issues with the experience or encounter poor interactions, fix them immediately, especially problems that directly block the usage flow.

My old approach was to save bug fixes for the end of the day. But once, a user DM'd me saying: "Your app doesn't have this feature yet, I'll use Y for now."

I expressed understanding at the time, but the result was, the user kept using product Y afterwards. I tried multiple times via DMs to bring them back, but it was very difficult—they had already formed the habit of using Y.

Ultimately, once users establish habits on another product, the cost of switching them back becomes extremely high.

Therefore, try to achieve: bugs fixed within 2–5 hours.

If multiple users repeatedly request a new feature that is very important to them and technically feasible:

· Develop and launch it within 2–3 days

· Clearly tell them it was launched based on their feedback

· You can even offer some economic incentive (this might turn them into your product's most active promoters)

A recent user DM from someone requesting an important feature.

Delivering features based on user needs does three things: directly improves the product itself, increases user engagement frequency, and builds deep trust.

When users see their feedback taken seriously and actually turned into product features, they start to feel: this product is "partly theirs."

This emotional sense of "ownership" is extremely important and powerful in early-stage consumer products.

4. The App's Name is Very Important

This might sound basic, but many people—including myself—have made serious mistakes at this step.

Your app name must be highly memorable and easy enough to relay and share. Otherwise, you'll frequently receive messages like this (users want to recommend but can't remember what you're called).

And indeed—the name "encifher" itself was hard to remember, I really can't blame users for that.

There were even many group chats created by investors or partners where the product name was misspelled, looking back now I can only smile wryly.

That's precisely why we later changed the name to encrypt.trade.

There are actually many existing methods and resources online for choosing a name that's "memorable and easy to share."

5. Communicating with Users is Hard, But Non-Negotiable

Finding users and actually talking to them is inherently very difficult, especially when your direction isn't within the current mainstream narrative.

When I first worked on privacy-related products, it wasn't a popular sector. Although many retail users had genuine privacy needs, they were scattered and hard to find.

So I did something most people deliberately avoid: during the idea validation phase, I proactively cold-DM'd nearly 1000 people.

If lucky, about 10 out of 100 people might reply; and among those replies, maybe only 3–4 could give you useful feedback.

A very poor example of a cold DM.

In practice, as long as someone showed even a little interest, I would have in-depth conversations with them, iterating on the product while communicating with users.

In fact, cold DMing itself is a process that needs constant iteration. When writing and sending cold DMs, there are several key points to note: try to start with a relatively "soft" opening, put the most substantial information upfront (e.g., funding status, transaction volume processed, etc.), mention where you saw or learned about them, maintain a friendly, non-intrusive call-to-action (CTA), and always follow up—don't just send once and stop.

There's no such thing as a "perfect cold DM." You need to continuously A/B test different versions to find out what truly works for your target users.

Below is a higher-quality cold DM template (thanks to @realsimon, from @alliance), you can refer to it directly:

But it's important to be clear: this process is slow and psychologically draining.

In crypto, very few people are willing to reply to cold DMs because scams are everywhere. Low reply rates are the norm (it is indeed a bit demoralizing).

But even so, you still have to do it.

At this stage, your goal isn't to get 1000 users. Your goal is 10–20 early users who possess the following characteristics: genuinely care about the problem you're solving, willing to try your product, able to give honest, direct feedback.

These early users will gradually become your support system. Early-stage products almost always have frequent issues, and it's these users who help you through the most fragile phase.

6. Iterate Quickly

The pace in crypto is extremely fast. Narratives change rapidly, and user attention spans are even shorter.

If the product you're building has no real value, it's inherently hard to get attention; even if you briefly gain attention without value, that focus won't last.

At best, it can bring a short-term hype wave, but the product itself cannot survive long-term.

This is toly's advice to developers at Breakpoint 2025.

The core meaning is only three points: ship fast, iterate frequently, dare to make radical adjustments.

I also learned something very important: users won't always directly tell you what to do next.

You need to judge by observing their behavior: what are they doing repeatedly? What workarounds or detours are they using? What are they already willing to pay for?

Many ideas sound reasonable, but most users may not be willing to pay for them.

7. Please Make Your Website "Idiot-Proof"

I don't know why this needs to be emphasized repeatedly, but let me say it again: "Don't make any assumptions about users."

If you think users should understand, you're wrong. Things that are obvious to us developers who have spent hundreds of hours building the product are completely foreign to first-time users.

Don't introduce any new concepts or workflows. Only use simple, familiar things that genuinely make users' lives easier. Click paths should be as streamlined as possible; users should be able to see, understand, or perceive the product's value within 5 seconds of entering the app (this is something we are still continuously optimizing).

I can't attach screenshots, but I've received many DMs where users completely misunderstood the purpose of a certain feature.

Conclusion

Building consumer crypto products is both fun and challenging.

Speed, extreme focus on users, and distribution capabilities are often more important than "perfect technology."

This is very different from B2B products, but I still believe it was the right choice for us.

This piece is already long enough; I'll talk about fundraising experiences in the next one. Finally, just use encrypt.trade :)

If this resonates with you, or if you're also building consumer crypto products and want to chat about GTM, distribution, or the product itself, feel free to DM me.

I'm always happy to connect with other founders and developers.

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