Ethereum

Raised as a usability problem by 38 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2016–2024), in 35 threads.

People raised many different problems with Ethereum, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 37 complaints

EVM wallets rely on browser extensions and mobile apps, which the commenter finds limiting2024-05-21
Protocol concepts are so complex that only the most involved users understand them2023-09-30
Layer 2 scaling is very user-unfriendly and confusing for people to use2023-09-30
Malicious sites can easily drain wallets; users lack clear warnings about granted permissions2023-09-30
Same key used for Wikipedia edits can drain bank-linked funds, risking phishing2023-07-03
Software is bloated and hard to use, with feature creep and churn2023-05-26
High gas fees and slow transaction processing frustrate users2022-09-14
Introduces lots of jargon without explaining what the terms mean, making it hard to understand2022-08-24
Users must read Solidity code to know what they are approving2022-02-15
Can't tell what a signed button actually does; interfaces can misrepresent it2022-02-14
Website shows a blank page and takes over 15 seconds to render2022-02-11
Sending tokens to a contract address silently destroys them with no warning or recovery2022-01-31
Complex, confusing concepts with many footguns that make mistakes easy2022-01-30
Smart contracts have many gotchas and are confusing and error prone to write2022-01-30
Archival data is practically unusable because querying it requires replaying weeks of history linearly2022-01-08
Onboarding requires acquiring Ether, bridging to an L2, and using a separate token, which is confusing2021-12-14
Developer experience is worse than user experience, making it hard to build with2021-07-26
Staking requires a complex server-style manual with shell operations, risking mistakes2021-04-25
Described as slow, limited, and difficult for users to operate2021-04-21
The commenter finds Ethereum extremely confusing to understand2021-01-13
Too many similar-looking wallet websites make it hard for beginners to pick one2020-12-02
Enormous lag when interacting with the interface, worse than other apps2019-08-19
Onboarding takes around 17 steps, creating a steep entry curve for new users2019-08-17
Transactions take minutes to hours to confirm, making dapps unusable2019-01-03
Developers struggle with confusing edge cases when handling deposits and transaction sequencing2018-09-20
Users must understand and pay gas, making dapps hard to use2018-04-11
Experience is clunky and slow to interact with2018-01-18
Non-obvious bugs slip past testnet and drain deployed contract funds, making debugging a nightmare2018-01-16
Smart contract programming language is horrible to write contracts in2017-12-22
Wallet options for Ethereum and Zcash are overwhelming and confusing to choose and set up2017-12-10
Ethereum wallet software keeps failing to work, with repeated problems getting it running2017-12-06
Documentation is terrible and tools make debugging hours-long and frustrating2017-08-20
Button labelled Active Scams lists offline scams; no way to filter the list2017-08-04
Blind spots in docs make key recovery id and endianness hard to figure out2017-07-20
Gas cost naming makes fee calculation unintuitive, since multiplying price and cost is confusing2017-07-08
Users can pay on the wrong chain without realizing, and no client handles multiple chains at once2016-07-18
Ethereum is very confusing to use, even for highly technical people2016-06-06