The Apps That Democratized Investing Did One Thing Right That DeFi Is Still Figuring Out
In Brief
Between 2015 and 2022, retail investing underwent a transformation that had less to do with any new financial product and more to do with the surface through which ordinary people accessed markets.
Between 2015 and 2022, retail investing underwent a transformation that had less to do with any new financial product and more to do with the surface through which ordinary people accessed markets.
And, with mobile-first brokerages stripping away the paperwork, phone calls, and minimum account thresholds that had historically kept millions of potential investors on the sidelines, retail investor participation (in the US alone) roughly doubled over the aforementioned period, driven not by a change in what markets offered but by a change in how those markets could be reached.
In fact, during 2021, Robinhood grew from zero to 22 million funded accounts, almost entirely on the back of a simplified interface and zero-commission structure. Schwab and Fidelity (as well as hundreds of platforms across Europe and Asia) followed with their own mobile-native offerings.
A 2023 FINRA study also noted that first-time investors from this cohort were far more likely to make regular contributions, especially when transactions required as few steps as possible.
However, in all of this growth, the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has spent the better part of five years growing impressively on the protocol side while largely ignoring what the fintech interface revolution has already proven.
What DeFi’s Interface Problem Actually Looks Like
The total value locked across DeFi currently stands at roughly $83 billion, with the underlying infrastructure having matured considerably. L-2 transaction costs, for example, have fallen to fractions of a cent in many cases, while protocol security and cross-chain infrastructure have also improved, particularly when compared to where things were just three years ago.
And yet, fewer than five million wallets interact with DeFi platforms daily, against a global crypto-holding population of approximately 500 million people. The protocols, therefore, are not the problem, but interfaces operating atop them are.
To understand why this is a structural issue rather than a cosmetic one, it helps to trace what a user new to DeFi actually encounters. Accessing a decentralized exchange (DEX) requires a compatible wallet, an understanding of network selection, familiarity with gas fees and how they fluctuate, and, finally, enough judgment to verify that the front-end being used has not been compromised or taken offline.
Even adding a lending position to a user’s activity adds collateral monitoring requirements, while moving assets across chains introduces bridging interfaces, each with its own flow, its own risks, and its own failure modes. These are not edge-case complexities but baseline requirements for moderate DeFi participation.
The Interface Layer DeFi Should Have Had From the Start
Amidst these bottlenecks, a few platforms have emerged and made a difference almost immediately. CoinFello, for instance, approaches this problem from the same starting point the best fintech products have, i.e., the complexity need not disappear, but the user should not have to engage with it directly.
In this regard, the platform connects to all EVM-compatible wallets and also lets users create accounts using an email or phone number, which meaningfully lowers the entry barrier for people who do not yet hold assets in a self-custodied wallet. From there, a plain-language chat interface handles the translation layer between what the user wants and what actually happens on-chain.
So, a prompt like “move my idle stablecoins to the highest-yield position available” or “set up a weekly DCA into ETH” is taken as an instruction, with the agent mapping that intent to the relevant smart contracts, constructing the transaction, and presenting a full plain-language breakdown of what will execute before any confirmation is given.
Even more importantly, CoinFello interacts with smart contracts directly, bypassing dApp front-ends as intermediaries. This means the platform’s functionality is not dependent on any particular website remaining live or uncompromised, which addresses one of the more persistent structural risks that DeFi’s traditional interface model carries.
What’s the Endgame here?
What TradFi’s interface moment proved was that there was never a shortage of people who wanted to invest, but a lack in the number of interfaces that made it possible for them to do so (all without becoming something of an expert first). DeFi has had a version of that problem for years, and the tools beginning to address it are, finally, starting to look like what they should. Interesting times ahead, to day the least!
Disclaimer
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
