Getting crypto out of the ‘AOL era’ — Sandeep Nailwal

The existing state of crypto belongs to the web’s “America Online” (AOL) period throughout the late 1990s, when the user experience was cumbersome, technical, included restricted usage cases, and moved at dial-up speeds, according to Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Nailwal recognized a number of crucial locations of advancement to enhance user experience, consisting of smooth fiat on- and off-ramps, custody options that include crucial healing, and hardware wallets constructed into mobile phones.

” We remain in the dial-up period of the web where even linking to the Web was a laborious job, like you needed to be a mini-engineer to be able to link to the Web– we are still there in crypto.”– Sandeep Nailwal

” We are most likely still in 1998, and it is going to take a minimum of 10 to 15 years to see crypto in its complete magnificence,” the Polygon creator included.

The web took in between 30-40 years to accomplish mass adoption and started with a restricted variety of usage cases. In the late 1990s, the AOL period of the web was mostly concentrated on e-mail and fundamental web surfing, however today, the web incorporates the whole economy.

Nailwal stated that the existing state of crypto is comparable, with monetary usage cases, especially market speculation, being the core focus of crypto at this time.

Nevertheless, once the monetary usage cases have actually been totally established and accomplished enough adoption, crypto adoption will infect alternative usage cases such as decentralized social networks, video gaming, and other specific niche sectors, he stated.

Related: Security issues sluggish crypto payment adoption worldwide– Study

Remaining in crypto today is being early to the celebration

Nailwal explained that even the base usage case for cryptocurrencies, which is monetary, has actually not been totally established.

According to a February 2025 report from Bitcoin (BTC) monetary services business River, just 4% of people around the world own BTC– which is the initial cryptocurrency with the biggest market cap and has the most traditional appeal.

The report discovered that BTC has actually just accomplished about 3% of its overall adoption course when organizations, the overall addressable market, and appropriate portfolio allotments are thought about.

This little number of BTC holders suggests that crypto mass adoption is still years away and signifies that the whole market is still in the early adopter stage of advancement.

Publication: They fixed crypto’s janky UX issue– you simply have not discovered yet