A chat with Emmanuel Onuoha on the shift from building with crypto to mass adoption

Nigeria remains one of the most active crypto markets in the world. Yet for all the headlines about adoption, most people who brushed against Web3 during the gamified “tap-to-earn” campaigns on Telegram boom never stayed.

For a moment, it seemed the barrier to entry had finally crumbled. No wallets, no gas fees, and no jargon, just a game on their phones. Millions participated; they played, earned the tokens, swapped them once, and left.

What followed was a familiar hangover: people held digital assets they could not easily spend, move, or even explain. The industry succeeded at acquisition and failed at utility and retention.

According to Emmanuel Onuoha, veteran ecosystem builder and founder of Web3 Nigeria, this was not a failure of trust or regulation but of design and user experience. 

“The root problem is user experience,” Onuoha says. “It is much easier for ‘normies’ to adopt Web2 products because the onboarding flow is seamless. In Web3, there is almost always a bottleneck.”

He argues that founders must stop building “crypto products” and start building money apps that happen to be powered by blockchain. That shift changes priorities. It puts onboarding, local rails and device constraints at the centre. It treats the user like a customer that should be marketed to, not a pupil that should be educated on how to use a product.

The comparison he draws is telling. In Nigeria, betting platforms like SportyBet attract tens of millions of users. They work because they feel seamless; you sign up with an email or phone number, top up from your bank, place a bet and withdraw your wins. No one asks you to understand databases, payment rails, or reconciliation systems. The technology disappears.

Crypto, by contrast, has spent the last decade doing the opposite. It introduces itself through complexity, seed phrases, wallet extensions, gas fees, networks and bridges. For a population already fluent in mobile money and fintech apps, this friction is fatal.

Onuoha’s argument is simple but pointed: Nigerian crypto startups will not achieve mass adoption by building better “crypto products”. They will get there by building financial products that feel native, familiar, and invisible and only happen to be powered by blockchain.

I sat down with him to unpack how that shift can happen, what builders are getting wrong, and why the future of Nigerian crypto may look less like a decentralised exchange and more like a betting slip.

Emmanuel Onuoha diagnoses UX as the biggest hurdle to crypto mass adoption in Nigeria

Blessed Frank: Many Nigerians entered crypto through the tap-to-earn era, but most could not go beyond swapping what they earned. From your experience onboarding users across Africa, what has been the biggest challenge in retaining them?

Emmanuel Onuoha: Proper blockchain adoption, especially in Africa, is still a major hurdle. The biggest challenge is user experience (UX). It is much easier for “normies” (non-crypto users) to adopt Web2 products because the onboarding flow is seamless. You download an app, sign in with an email or phone number, and you’re in.

In Web3, the first suggestion is often, “Go and create a wallet.” For someone who knows nothing about crypto, that alone can end the journey. The reason tap-to-earn worked was that it delayed that friction. Users were already inside Telegram, a familiar environment. They played a game first. Only at the very end were they asked to think about a wallet.

Blessed Frank: Elsewhere, you’ve mentioned “chain abstraction” as a practical fix. Can you explain what that means in plain terms and how it addresses onboarding friction?

Emmanuel Onuoha: Chain abstraction allows decentralised products to use familiar Web2 onboarding flows. A user can sign up with their name and email, the same way they would on Kuda or OPay. Behind the scenes, that email activates a non-custodial wallet.

The user does not need to understand seed phrases or private keys on day one. They just see a dashboard. The wallet exists, and it is theirs, but it is not forced into their face. This removes the biggest psychological and technical barrier to entry.

There are providers already doing this, like Privy and Web3Auth. They allow builders to preserve the core benefits of blockchain while hiding the complexity from users who are not ready for it.

Blessed Frank: Betting platforms in Nigeria scale because the experience is seamless. Is crypto held back because it insists on exposing jargon and technical depth too early?

Emmanuel Onuoha: I don’t think it is deliberate exclusion. With every new technology, there is a learning curve. We saw the same thing with ATM cards, POS machines, and mobile transfers in Nigeria. People did not trust them initially; now they are second nature.

The difference is that those systems were built for everyday use. In crypto, many early products were not designed for daily life; they showed the plumbing instead of the service.

I am currently building a product for the prediction and betting market. The blockchain sits entirely in the background. The front end looks like a normal Web2 app. When products look and feel like what people already use, founders can focus on growth and marketing rather than endless education.

Blessed Frank: Betting apps scale in Nigeria because they integrate with banks and use agent networks. How can crypto platforms match that native fiat experience?

Emmanuel Onuoha: Every product should prioritise ease of use. Beyond account abstraction, we need seamless “on-ramps” and “off-ramps” built directly into the platforms. If you’re building a payment product, a user should be able to deposit local fiat, have it converted to stablecoins, and then off-ramp their money whenever they want it back to fiat, all within the app.

Emmanuel Onuoha,

We need to remove the blockchain stigma. A user, like a local rider on the street, shouldn’t need to know it’s a blockchain app to interact with it. The moment users forget they are using crypto, you have won. We are starting to see Nigerian products building these solutions now, focusing on usability over technical labels.

Blessed Frank: One of the entry barriers in the blockchain space is language and technical jargon. Should crypto builders consider this? How is Web3Nigeria rethinking the vocabulary of the interfaces you support?

Emmanuel Onuoha: Absolutely. If you are building a stablecoin app, call it a money app. Jargon impresses investors, not users.

At Web3 Nigeria, we are deliberate about this. We conduct quarterly campus tours to reach “normies” who know nothing about crypto. We try to bridge the gap and show the vision of what blockchain can do without making it feel far away. It’s a huge task because while many have heard of blockchain, they don’t know how to participate in the economy. We want to reach students, market women, and people who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy. Our job is to make that participation feel natural.

Blessed Frank: Finally, many Nigerians use low-end Androids or feature phones. How should product teams respond to those device constraints and unreliable connectivity?

Emmanuel Onuoha: It comes down to proper market research. Builders often prefer tech stacks that support high-end gadgets, but we need to build for everyone. We should stop thinking, “I am building a blockchain product for Nigerians,” and start thinking, “I am building a product for Nigerians that solves an issue, and it happens to be layered on blockchain.”

If you think from a Web2 perspective regarding UI/UX and tech stacks, you automatically start optimising for the devices your target audience actually uses. This eliminates the need to educate the user on the underlying tech; they just use the product because it works.

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