How to improve the UX of layer-two Ethereum rollups?

Problem

I can’t agree more with Vitalik Buterin, who once said:

“In the migration to rollups, the biggest challenge is User Experience.” — Vitalik Buterin, ETHGlobal Summit.

Indeed. The second layer of Ethereum and the emerge of rollups needs better UX. Picture Bob, who is new to crypto. He has just created a new wallet, and he has no clue about what networks are. All of a sudden, he notices multiple DAI tokens in his wallet. What? All of those DAI tokens have a different balance. It says something about DAI on zkSync, DAI on Mainnet, DAI on Optimism…

Seeing the latest one, he becomes even more pessimistic on if he would ever be able to understand what the hack means. Moreover, every time he wants to purchase something online, he does not understand why he can’t just buy with the DAI he definitely has. Then he goes Youtube to watch 1,5h on what is zkRollup and Optimistic Rollups. Does he really need to know this fancy blockchain jargon? He just wanted to purchase something online.

Solution

What if he would have just one token in his wallet – DAI. In the same way, he has one bank account balance with multiple currencies. And every time he makes a purchase online, it will auto-convert to the DAI network he is spending at the best available rate. So Bob doesn’t have to pre-purchase DAI on different networks. He can do it manually, but he does not have to worry about it.

So from a UX perspective, Bob will only see one token – DAI. When he opens that token, he will be able to find how DAI is allocated on multiple networks.

If he wants to manually transfer to a different network, he is just a few clicks away.

Bob purchases NFT

Let’s consider a scenario when Bob wants to purchase a digital painting. The dapp runs on zkSync, and the price for that NFT is 1500 DAI. He hits “Purchase” and signs the transaction with his private key. Since his DAI balance on zkSync was too low, the wallet auto-converts to the DAI to the network he is spending at the best available rate. Unless this is going down to mainnet, the fee of that transaction will be very low.

Here is a sequence of the transaction, the wallet enables the bridge, auto-convert the remaining DAI, and purchases an NFT. Bob does not need to understand the conversion between networks. He just needs a cool painting. Doesn’t he?

After the transaction, Bob finds that his DAI balance was reduced to 230 DAI. He looks for the details. He finds that his zkSync balance was reduced from 1300 DAI to 0 DAI, and the Optimism Rollups is now 100 DAI (300 DAI previously).