Interview with TON user and UX specialist

User Experience (UX) encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

Q: Can you introduce yourself briefly?

A: I’m “abc9e” and have worked as UX specialist and in other areas of technology for the past 30 years including with some big name companies. I currently manage UX for the TonSafe mobile TON wallet.

Q: What brought you to TON?

A: I follow Pavel Durov on Telegram and when I heard about TON from him again at the end of 2021, I thought I’ll check it out. I liked the potential for it to contribute to a better, more fair world.

Q: You said “liked” — has something changed?

A: When I first dived in I was very enthusiastic but quickly met poor UX from the starting point, the wallets. I then immersed myself in numerous Telegram TON groups to find out what was going on. It left a lot to be desired.

Q: Can you summarize your concerns?

A: There are many, not easy to summarize. If forced, I’d say: poor UX, a clique which isn’t qualified to reach “mass adoption”, and unwelcoming to outsiders.

Q: Let’s break this down. Poor UX?

A: Yes. This is what led me to advocate for a TON wallet with a completely different approach, led by non-crypto users needs: easy, fast, safe payments by anyone, anytime, anywhere which resulted in today’s TonSafe wallet.

Q: But why is UX in TON poor?

A: Everything is led by “crypto” aficionados, “developer” geeks, and they just do what they do best, and do not consider, or lack qualifications to consider the needs of your average person, or even professionals, and cater to them.

Q: What do you mean by “mass adoption”?

A: This term is thrown around constantly by the TON clique and by it they mean the masses embracing TON, or, the viral spread of TON and its uptake.

Q: What are the obstacles to this mass uptake?

A: Get out of your bubble. Crypto has a terrible reputation. Make products and provide services that are customer oriented and fit for purpose. This requires a lot of empathy. And you have to be based on firm principles.

Q: Firm Principles?

A: Yes. At first, it may not be noticed or bring in “profits”, but if you are not rooted with an inbuilt love of equity, fairness, honesty, integrity and other high moral values, you’ll tolerate and perpetuate scams or even participate in them. If this is anathema to you, people will soon see this and want to check out your products and services. This morality is lacking in leading TON clique.

Q: How do you know it is lacking?

A: Easy. Look at their websites and publications. They are not customer oriented and they have no clear defined principles or goals which reflect this. They conspire together for short-term gain and it is already backfiring. They are not making anywhere near the expected progress. They need to focus on technical things and stop shutting out those who are outsiders and instead of investing in their own inadequate products, invest in those that are proven in commitment and quality. There are very few such projects, from my research.

Q: Is this why you said “unwelcoming to outsiders”?

A: Yes. TON is not welcoming to the average person because the first thing they meet is a wallet. A waving duck doesn’t cut it. The experience must be good, the information and support must be good. They must feel included in a community, there needs to be a “halo effect” around the product. Also TON clique themselves don’t take any advice nor need any assistance, they always know best, initially I wanted to help Tonkeeper, and then Tonhub to improve. The experiences of reaching out to them were appalling. So there is a lot of hostility and I have found this with many others who got immersed into TON.

Q: You paint a negative picture. Is there hope?

A: The average person would run a mile and never look back when they enter such a system, I call it the TON “egosystem”, but I’m incredibly strong and resilient, I have faced abuse throughout my adult life, the types of abuse that would drive the average person to suicide or madness. So, I stayed, I threw all my energy into helping to develop a new product with a vision of a real “ecosystem” around honest, clean products and services that have real utility. So it there hope? Yes. It will take longer than necessary because of the need to avoid working with any projects that do not have the required high moral standards and proven principles. But in the end, this may pay off.

Q: Can you give an example of this?

A: One example is how the various wallets have handled Apple’s broken App Store Review system. If you have high principles you will never compromise and deceive your users, as they chose to do, either by creating a “support” service purely because it is a requirement to get into the stores, but it is fake, or by deceiving users around “account deletion”. Once you do that, any such mistake, can never ever be forgotten or fixed in your reputation history. It is a blot that will remain forever on that team or product. On the other hand, if you stick to principles and never break them, at first you will surely suffer hardships but your reputation is forever intact. People will soon notice that.

Q: What hopes or potentials do you see in TON?

A: Obviously the technology is strong. But this “web 3” and other things are ahead of their time, to reach numbers of people you need to be focused on their needs. Don’t try to fit a technology to a need and force it on people. Use technology appropriately, it is not the “be all and end all”. It should be a tool to make life better. Technology in my view generally makes the majority of people’s lives worse. I’m interested in helping people gain more independence and freedom, and this also means financially.

I see TON as helpful for a fast, secure payment system without the middleman. Faster and cheaper than other blockchains. I’m trying to make that practical and relevant, and this is where I advise TonSafe. The “competition” need not be afraid: the more “outsiders” start using TON the better it is even for all TON projects. We need to dispel the bad reputation of “crypto” and create a good reputation for TON. The current efforts, including Telegram usernames, really do not cut it and many believe they are even backfiring. Like I said, you cannot do this if it is not a core qualification of your very being: you cannot fake true passion, good values, if you want to see just how badly that goes, look at “SBF”!

Q: Can you tell us more about TonSafe and its plans?

A: TonSafe’s goal is easy, fast, safe payments for anyone, anytime, anywhere. This has largely been achieved, in my view. There are still more features and improvements on the way. More investment is required. Outreach into certain markets is planned, I cannot say more about this strategy just now. TonSafe wants to be the default wallet for professionals but also for ordinary people who want easy payments. A hurdle for many people is how to buy TON easily, or exchange it, and this is something which TonSafe wants to improve and will work with any other partners provided they have a solid reputation and history. This is also where the “safe(r) ecosytem” comes into play, this should be a launchpad for reliable and reputable TON products and services, rather like how Apple (at least in the past) provides a safe ecosystem.

Q: What would you like to say to everyone reading this?

A: Enter to TON via TonSafe for a better experience! Follow tonsafe.net and if you are on Twitter follow @TonWallet or on Telegram follow @TonSafe - so that you are kept up to date with developments. These 3 social medias have different use cases for TonSafe: Telegram, being a messenger, there is no more than 1 post per day, usually less. Twitter is more for engagement and more frequent posts on all sorts of related things, not only TonSafe. The tonsafe.net site has news and educational materials that are less frequent, perhaps once a week on average, and can also be followed via social media.

Start using TON with your TonSafe. Earn TON, save TON, or spend TON: use it to cut down on your reliance on other currencies and centralized systems. Using TonSafe which is a self-custodial, also known as non-custodial wallet, means that you and only you have access to your funds. Because those funds are on TON blockchain, they are secure: it does not depend on one single server or even on TonSafe at all. So long as you preserve a written copy of your 24 secret words in a secure location, you won’t lose those funds, even if you lose your TonSafe wallet. The funds aren’t in the wallet but on the blockchain, the wallet simply gives you access. Much like a banking app and your funds being in the bank, only the blockchain is decentralized and more secure as there isn’t a bank manager who can switch off your account.