Published research
Published research on how people use wallets, with a note on which findings transfer to BSV and which do not.
Almost all published research on wallet usability was done on BTC. This page keeps the findings that are about people, which transfer, and leaves out the ones about a particular fee market or network, which do not.
What transfers and what does not
Findings about mental models, key management, trust and error recovery hold here, because they are about how people think about irreversible money. Findings about fees, confirmation waits and channel management describe a system BSV does not have.
Key management and security behaviour
The strongest body of work, and the most directly useful. Each of these studies finds the same thing in a different way: people do not understand what a key is, and they protect it accordingly.
A First Look at the Usability of Bitcoin Key Management
2018, Eskandari, Barrera, Stobert and Clark.
An evaluation of key management across six clients. Still the clearest statement of why this is hard, and why the usual security metaphors fail. Transfers in full.
The Other Side of the Coin: User Experiences with Bitcoin Security and Privacy
2017, Krombholz, Judmayer, Gusenbauer and Weippl.
990 users surveyed. Most did not use the security features their wallet already had, and most held serious misconceptions about what was private. Transfers, and the privacy misconceptions are worse here, because everything is permanent and public.
Bits Under the Mattress: Understanding Different Risk Perceptions and Security Behaviours of Crypto-Asset Users
2021, Abramova, Voskobojnikov, Beznosov and Böhme.
Three user archetypes with very different security behaviour. Useful when deciding who your defaults are for. Transfers.
Usability and errors
The U in Crypto Stands for Usable: An Empirical Study of User Experience with Mobile Cryptocurrency Wallets
2021, Voskobojnikov, Wiese, Koushki, Roth and Beznosov.
App reviews of the five largest mobile wallets, coded for UX failures. New and experienced users both make errors that cost money irreversibly. Transfers, minus the fee-related complaints, which are a large share of the total.
User Perception of Bitcoin Usability and Security across Novice Users
2019, Alshamsi and Andras.
Novices and their mental models, with a recommendation to design for the model rather than correct it. Transfers.
The Usability of Cryptocurrency
2018, Scherba.
A readable summary of the field's standing usability problems: the price of a mistake, the absence of undo, unreadable addresses, and waiting. Partly transfers. Three of those four still apply; the waiting does not.
Trust and non-adoption
Non-adoption of crypto-assets: Exploring the role of trust, self-efficacy and risk
2021, Voskobojnikov, Abramova, Beznosov and Böhme.
404 people, half users and half not. Trust predicts adoption more strongly than understanding does. Transfers, and matters more for an app asking for wallet permissions than for a wallet.
The gap
This guide knows of no published research on these questions:
- Whether people understand a wallet connection permission, and what they think they have granted (Usability test plans, Plan 1).
- How people feel about many tiny automatic payments, and at what point an allowance stops feeling safe (Plan 2).
- What proportion of people can restore a wallet when it needs two separate artefacts rather than one (Plan 3).
- What people think a handle is, and whether they treat it like an email address, a username or an account number (What people call things).
Recommendation
If you run a study on any of these, write it up using the template on Writing up findings. A small study, reported with its numbers, is worth more than none.
Related
Written from: the studies cited on this page.
Checklist
The rules on this page, in a form you can work through.
1 rules