<aside> 🧭

At a glance

• Role: UX Writer
• Skills: UX writing, voice and tone, usability-testing synthesis, microcopy
• Product: Solflare, a self-custody Solana wallet (mobile + web)
• The challenge: A brand-led welcome ("Your Wallet. Your Kingdom.") that new users found intimidating, paired with onboarding that never told them what to actually do
• The result: After rollout, completion rose on every path (create +2.7 percentage points, manual import +2.2, Keystone +7.4), and fewer people abandoned the welcome before choosing a path (from 14.8% to 12.4%) </aside>

A self-custody wallet asks a lot of a stranger in about a minute: understand a recovery phrase, trust the app with real money, and know what to do next. The old welcome met that stranger with "Your kingdom." This is the story of how plainer words ("All-in-one Solana wallet. Safe. Simple. Yours.") turned a medieval metaphor into a first minute people actually finished.

The challenge: a welcome that intimidated the people it needed to orient

Solflare is a self-custody Solana wallet where people hold real assets from the very first screen. That raises the stakes on onboarding: a newcomer has to grasp a recovery phrase, trust the app, and find their footing, all before they have much reason to.

The welcome leaned on brand personality. The hero read "Your Wallet. Your Kingdom.", and the theme carried through the flow with lines like "start exploring your kingdom" and "keys to your kingdom." Distinctive, yes. Moderated usability testing with 11 participants (from crypto-native holders to near-complete beginners) showed the personality was getting in the way of comprehension.

The recurring patterns:

• The welcome intimidated more than it invited. One participant called "start exploring your kingdom" "a little terrifying." Another summed up the whole setup: "it's for someone who knows what they're doing; it doesn't tell you what to do."
• The recovery phrase caused near-universal confusion. Almost every participant paused at it, unsure what it was or why it mattered, even the ones who eventually explained it correctly.
• Crypto vocabulary blocked people. "Staking" and "decentralized app" went unexplained; several users stalled on them outright.
• The flow went quiet after wallet creation. Users couldn't tell how to fund the wallet, or that SOL comes before swapping for other tokens; with no clear next step, first-timers were left guessing.

So the copy had two jobs: make the first screen orient and reassure on sight, and let the rest of onboarding teach without lecturing.

Before: the old flow, screen by screen

Here is the create-wallet path in the order a newcomer actually walked it. Click through the eight screens below; the numbered pins mark where the copy got in the way.

widget-before.html

The pattern across all eight

• Capitalization never settles. The welcome shouts in all-caps, every other headline is Title Case, and "Recovery Phrase" gets capitalized mid-sentence. Plain sentence case throughout would read calmer and more current.
• The kingdom metaphor bookends the flow (welcome, "Keys to Your Kingdom," "exploring your kingdom"), decoration exactly where a stranger needs orientation.
• Fear is front-loaded on the phrase screens, spiking anxiety at the moment users are least sure of themselves.
• The security advice argues with itself: write it on paper, then "Copy," then "Skip for now" on the actual seed.
• Small snags add up: "Unlock Quicker," the "&," and "you are all set" all pull against the plain, human voice the rewrite would later land.