Summary
- While Web3 offers permissionless access, true financial inclusion hinges on users' ability to navigate the system safely.
- Every user has an "error budget": a $25 fee may be trivial for a $10,000 transfer but significant for a $100 one.
- According to Chainalysis, Sub-Saharan Africa saw $205.7 billion in on-chain value from July 2024 to June 2025, with Nigeria contributing $92.1 billion.
Web3 markets itself as a more inclusive financial ecosystem accessible to anyone with a smartphone and internet connection. This is a notable advancement; however, access alone does not guarantee that it is safe or practical for users.
Users can still incur losses by making errors such as selecting the wrong network, overpaying fees, or sending assets to unsupported destinations. If these mistakes recur, they highlight a flaw in the product, even if the industry labels them as user error.
Access vs. Inclusion
Permissionless access answers a basic question: can someone enter the system? Financial inclusion, however, requires addressing more complex issues. Can users comprehend their actions, identify potentially harmful moves before committing, and utilize the product without losing substantial amounts of money in the learning process?
This distinction is crucial because cryptocurrency is no longer just for traders willing to risk disposable income. In regions facing currency collapse, rampant inflation, high remittance costs, or scarcity of foreign currency, crypto fulfills a vital, practical role.
For instance, Sub-Saharan Africa recorded $205.7 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, marking a 51.7% increase from the previous year. Nigeria alone accounted for $92.1 billion. Chainalysis attributes much of this activity to inflation, currency devaluation, limited foreign exchange access, and the growing use of crypto for cross-border transactions.
In the upcoming chapter of our 2025 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report, we explore the crypto market in Sub-Saharan Africa, which grew 52% to $205 billion, making it the world's third-fastest-growing region.
Discover how Nigeria and South Africa are leading institutional adoption while retail… pic.twitter.com/UVlCfZwpzc
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) September 10, 2025
For many users, cryptocurrencies are essential for saving money, making payments, or transferring funds internationally. Stablecoins and blockchain transactions can lower costs by eliminating intermediaries and expediting processes. However, lower costs do not inherently mean greater accessibility. If users must navigate networks, gas fees, bridges, wallet permissions, slippage, address formats, and transaction finality just to engage, it simply shifts complexity from financial institutions to individuals.
The Concept of an Error Budget
Every user of financial products has what could be termed an "error budget"—the amount they can afford to lose while learning how the product functions before it becomes economically unfeasible to continue.
Consider two individuals executing the same on-chain transaction concurrently, each incurring $25 in fees. One is transferring $10,000, while the other is moving $100. From the protocol's standpoint, the transactions are equivalent, but the $25 fee is merely a nuisance for the former, while it represents a quarter of the latter's total transfer.
Blockchain protocols do not assess the user's income, savings, or financial context, nor should they. However, products often have enough transaction data to identify potential issues. They can analyze the transfer amount, estimate fees, compare available routes, project the expected arrival amount, and sometimes determine if the chosen destination is compatible with the selected network.
Despite this, many interfaces treat technical decisions as if all users possess equal capital, experience, and risk tolerance. This is not the case. Fixed and unpredictable costs disproportionately harm those transferring smaller amounts, while irreversible mistakes carry heavier consequences for individuals with limited savings. The less capital someone has, the tighter their error budget becomes.
A financial system that necessitates costly lessons before it can be used safely may be open, but that openness does not equate to inclusivity.
Self-Custody Shouldn't Mean Isolation
This is not an argument against self-custody. It is essential that clients do not have to relinquish control simply because the underlying technology is complicated. The crypto industry often presents a false dichotomy: either a centralized platform manages the user experience, or users must handle every technical and security decision by themselves.
In reality, self-custody involves managing keys, recovery phrases, gas tokens, networks, approvals, bridges, and backups. Users gain financial freedom, but they also inherit a workload typically managed by multiple teams within a bank. This creates an unusual situation—users are given financial autonomy but are cautioned not to make mistakes. The key takeaway is that asset control and product assistance should not be mutually exclusive.
A self-custodial product can identify incompatible networks, explain permissions in simple terms, simulate transaction outcomes, highlight disproportionate fees, and differentiate risky actions from standard ones. It can suggest safer alternatives without taking control of the user's funds.
This is one reason we are evolving ChangeNOW from an instant exchange to a comprehensive crypto platform. A super app's goal should be to simplify the number of technical decisions users must make to accomplish basic financial tasks. While buying, storing, exchanging, sending, trading, or growing funds may rely on various back-end infrastructures, users should not bear the burden of connecting them all.
Learning from User Errors
Of course, users still have their own responsibilities. No financial product can prevent all poor decisions, halt every attack, or reverse transactions that have already been completed. Web3 entails genuine trade-offs, and ignoring this reality—by suggesting it is entirely risk-free—would be misleading. However, accountability is nuanced. One individual may make a single poor choice independently, but if similar errors recur among different users, it likely indicates that the product itself could be improved.
The industry's standard response often emphasizes education: read the documentation, view tutorials, learn about gas fees, and grasp the distinctions between networks, wallets, bridges, and exchanges before transferring funds. While education is vital, it cannot excuse predictable failures. Sending $100 should not necessitate a minor in distributed systems.
If users continually confuse networks, a single article will not suffice. If they grant permissions they do not comprehend, a lengthy disclaimer will not resolve the issue. If true costs only become apparent post-confirmation, the interface fails to provide informed consent.
Financial Freedom Shouldn't Be Pay-to-Learn
Web3 has successfully accomplished a significant feat: creating an open financial infrastructure that operates globally, independent of traditional banking systems. The next step may not be as glamorous to discuss publicly, but it is far more crucial for real-world uptake: making these systems user-friendly without requiring everyone to become experts.
This involves developing products that consolidate fragmented tools into coherent experiences, prevent predictable errors, and assist clients in achieving financial outcomes rather than merely completing blockchain transactions. This is the direction we are heading at ChangeNOW as we develop a super app. The aim is not to obscure Web3 or strip users of control, but rather to take responsibility for the complexities that products have long offloaded onto them.
The next billion users should not need sufficient disposable income to navigate the Web3 learning curve. Financial freedom should not imply that access is available only to those who can afford the high costs of learning. Web3 will only become genuinely inclusive when anyone can open a wallet, but ordinary people can use it without incurring costly mistakes as the price of entry.
Pauline Shangett is the Chief Strategy Officer at the non-custodial crypto platform ChangeNOW.
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