pull down to refresh
Personally I like a poker chips system. When you go to a casino or play a game of poker you have chips that you buy that you exchange to and fro for cash. Apply that concept to Monero marketplaces and you have an easy way to minimize friction.
Minimizing friction is the most basic requirement in all of this, I think, and the chips idea is a good one for exactly that reason. I’d add one thing: it’s not only about making Monero easier to use, it’s about making Monero a need.
Current users already use it out of need, since nobody uses something they don’t need. Take you, for example: you’re an anarchist, so you don’t want a state having a say over your money, and that’s why you need Monero (don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking for you, just take it as a reasonable assumption). But the people who see it as a “need” are a small group, and they generally come from the same circles. Monero’s built-in benefits happen to matter to you, so you need it.
What I think we need is to make using Monero a “have to” situation, beyond those built-in benefits. In other words: first build something people need, then make Monero the only way to access it. It doesn’t have to be for everyone. Even a specific but visible, high-volume group is enough. Here’s an example: artists. They post their work online constantly, draw fan art, get thousands of likes, yet very few can actually live off their work. Say we gave them a platform where they could really get paid for their labor (it’s not as simple as it sounds, take it as a thought experiment), and the platform works only with Monero.
At first there would obviously be a big barrier. But once that platform is the strongest door to that income, learning Monero stops being an ideology thing and becomes the price of entry. They wouldn’t learn it because they love Monero, but because they have to. Naturally, their followers would end up running into Monero through them as well, including people who would never have gone looking for it on their own.
Okay so mainstream here means everyone uses it for normal shopping, the way they use a card. That is the wrong prize.
Cash already lost that fight. A card is easier, and most people take easy until easy costs them. Monero will not feel better than cash at a counter.
What felt real in your post is the useful version. A small loop where you earn it and spend it and nobody asks your name. That does not have to become a grocery store.
The door is the miss. A lot of the private trade still wants coins before you can get coins. Teaching does not open a locked door. A faster wallet matters, and almost nobody meets that problem if they never get a first coin.
After the door, the coin needs a job the same day. A VPN. A SIM. A host. Not a slogan.
If mainstream means listed everywhere and a name on the way in, that is a different coin. Privacy is the point.