It has been a while since I last looked at a multi-functional mobile wallet so I recently tweeted out to see which ones people would like me to take a look at. Trust Wallet is one that was mentioned and I noticed it has been spoken about a lot recently for obvious reasons. We will touch on these reasons later in the article but let’s take a look at whether Trust Wallet provides a good user experience.
But first, what is Trust Wallet?
“Trust Wallet is the premier mobile ethereum wallet which works with any ERC20, ERC223 and ERC721 tokens. Trust Wallet also supports the main blockchains in the Ethereum ecosystem — Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Callisto. Currently more than 20,000 tokens that are built on Ethereum are accessible through Trust Wallet app.”
“Trust provides a user with unified wallet address that can be used to manage both Ethereum and all tokens. That means you can use the same address to participate in ICOs or airdrops as well as to send and receive Ethereum. Trust is intuitive and easy to understand yet packed with tons of useful features.”
The Trust Wallet User Experience
First steps- Setting up your Trust Wallet
I’m going to start this article right at the beginning of the process. Once you have downloaded the Trust Wallet app on Android or iOS, you are prompted to either create or import a wallet. I personally created a new wallet as the majority of users would and I found it was the typical process that you see across many mobile wallets. Write down 12 words and understand the importance of these words etcetera, etcetera. I think it’s worth highlighting that this is incredibly easy for people who are experienced in crypto but equally as easy to understand for people who are completely new to the space. It may be a little alien at first but anything new is. The process itself couldn’t be easier in my opinion.
However, a very small but important addition that you don’t see on every mobile wallet during the set up is the need for every user to select a check box that says “I understand that if I lose my recovery words, I will not be able to access my wallet”. Why is this so important? Making this compulsory for every user means that they cannot bypass the text as it draws your attention to it. The importance of this cannot be emphasised anymore.
The Interface and Functionality
When visiting the homepage for the first time, those first impressions can make or break an app. I was impressed with the clean and easy on the eye layout. The colours are neutral and it’s easy to understand what everything means as there is no over technical or crypto related jargon which I think is especially important. The simplicity of the layout essentially makes it hard to get lost which is exactly what I like to see. Being able to navigate easily, too and from the homepage always represents a well structured application. A quirky little addition is how the Trust Wallet has integrated live prices on to the homepage which I think is a ‘nice to have’ feature.
Whilst on the subject of content, I like how certain things on the website have been worded carefully such as the transaction costs. The options (as shown below) are Cheap, Regular & Fast. Logically it would make more sense for this to be Cheap, Regular & Expensive or Slow, Regular & Fast. Although it is only a minor thing and can be easily overlooked, I think it’s clever how the team have purposely worded this to what the reality of transactions are. Do you want cheap or fast? That’s the real expectation of transaction costs.
One thing that stood out to me earlier on in the ‘what is Trust Wallet?’ paragraph is how the website says “Trust provides a user with unified wallet address that can be used to manage both Ethereum and all tokens.” To me, this is huge as users want convenience and being able to manage all tokens in one place is the ultimate convenience. Just to clarify, Trust Wallet also supports other blockchains such as BTC and XRP which also contributes to a well rounded UX. Although people may argue it isn’t the best idea from a security point-of-view, convenience will always be number one to many people.
However, one thing that I think may confuse users is the process of adding a wallet to the users homepage. I recently searched for $TFD as an example and come across two different wallet options. Te-Food with the official logo and TeFood which is a TRC-10 token. Although you may say it’s obvious which one to chose that doesn’t mean it will be obvious to everyone. We are often told how important it is not to make mistakes when transferring funds as they could be lost forever so I think this would worry a lot of beginners. The problem here for me is that there is no help icon or content to explain the difference. Although I appreciate that there is a help centre in the settings, it would create a much more user-friendly journey if a small help icon or question mark was imported on to the image of the page shown below to put users at ease quickly and conveniently.
The additional Features
Throughout the wallet I seen additional features that aren’t necessary to the wallets functionality but are useful to have in order to meet a wider variety of user needs. One example is the option to buy cryptocurrency directly through the Trust Wallet. Although it is not necessary, it is again making a convenient user experience as the user can do everything from this one application. Customer convenience will always be number one. The browser functionality again isn’t something everybody would use but it’s a nice to have for the people who will. Although we understand that the main purpose of the wallet is to store, send and receive coins/tokens, making the wallet a well rounded platform whilst keeping it’s simplicity is great to see (as long as the team don’t get carried away with innovation and lose touch of the simplicity).
The security
Under security I often talk about the usual iOS features such as FaceID which is always great to see and many of the mobile apps have integrated this functionality. However, with Trust Wallet there is something much more important to talk about.
Trust Wallet is the official wallet of Binance. Why is this so important? As a user I take a step back and think ‘Why would somebody like CZ (CEO of Binance) who has so much on the line and so much to lose, use a wallet that cannot be trusted?’ I know this could be seen as lazy or incompetent but realistically, CZ wouldn’t risk Binance’s reputation being damaged because they didn’t do their due-diligence on a wallet or was paid by Trust Wallet to use them over any other competitor. It just wouldn’t happen. Essentially if CZ can trust the Trust Wallet then I think we can too although it is still advised to do your own research on the wallet and its security.
*You can view my UX Review of the Binance DEX here.*
Conclusion
Overall I do believe that Trust Wallet is one of the best mobile wallets out there from an end-to-end user experience perspective. UX isn’t just about design, it’s about any variable that can affect your experience when using a product or service and that’s why I talk about all things including functionality, content, design, security and more.
With the market starting to look bullish (as of today’s date- May 17th 2019) we can expect plenty of new people to slowly start entering the space from here onwards. I personally will be recommending Trust Wallet to those who are looking for a mobile wallet whilst they are waiting for their hardware wallet to arrive or for the users who are looking for somewhere to store their unsupported low cap gems.
You can download the Trust Wallet on iOS here.
You can download the Trust Wallet on Android here.
I did not get paid to write this review so any tips are much appreciated.
- BNB tip jar: bnb136ns6lfw4zs5hg4n85vdthaad7hq5m4gtkgf23
- BTC tip jar: 3Lrf6trAgzL9QWtMfbjMTqaJ4RyzS8vWSK
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Disclaimers
- I have not been paid by Trust Wallet or Binance to write this article. This is something I volunteered to do due to my background in UX.
- All opinions and views within this article are my own.
- This review was wrote on the Trust Wallet version 2.4569.0.
