This initiative falls under the UX Bounty scope and the necessary resources will be covered by its budget. You can find all relevant materials here.
The full documentation is available here on the UX Bounty Notion website:
Overview
Users must navigate several challenges mentioned in the UX Bounty: multiple address formats, cross-chain transfers between Polkadot rollups and CEXs, and various unwritten rules (Existential Deposit, sufficient assets, Teleport feature, system chains) that aren’t always clearly explained in the dapps they interact with. See Annex for users feedback.
YOU HAVE TO LEARN, and this learning process sometimes involves mistakes that can result in lost funds.
I witnessed users’ challenges during Kusama’s early days when dapps and teams were learning to prevent asset transfer mistakes by implementing warning messages. At that time, wallets were in their infancy—Polkadot.js was the only substrate wallet available, and it offered limited functionality, mainly for signing transactions.
These issues, from early dapp implementations to more recent wallet challenges, have created significant negative sentiment toward the ecosystem. Users accustomed to monolithic chains have found these problems particularly frustrating. Once users lose assets, they rarely return to the ecosystem. The situation became so severe that some users accused the ecosystem as a whole of being “scammers” for not preventing these losses.
See the Notion doc for full details about mitigation risk strategies used in dapps
How can we solve this?
Common issues:
- Issue #1: Lack of adequate controls
- Issue #2: Lack of warnings and users education
See the Notion doc for full details about Solutions, Wallet Risk Protection Rating and UX good practices
Long Term solutions
Velocity Labs is working with exchanges on various topics.
A. CEX cross-chain management
Binance is currently perhaps the only CEX handling and monitoring cross-chain deposits on Polkadot. While they may not process it automatically, if a user raises a support ticket and insists, Binance will eventually recover the assets.
→ Ideally, CEXs monitoring cross-chain deposits on Polkadot should become the standard rather than the exception.
B. Asset Hub Migration
Exchanges managing all assets through AH could be a solution. Users would have a single entry and exit point for their transfers to exchanges, reducing the likelihood of errors.
Recommendations based on current situation to meet at least the critical recommendation
Nova
Nova currently does not meet the critical recommendation.
→ I think there’s enough space in the Confirm tx screen to add an explicit warning message for the CEX use case.
Subwallet
Subwallet’s warning is clear and closely aligns with the UXB-1 practice for the x-chain use case. The use case for CEX is explicitly mentioned. But for the Transfer use case, there is no such equivalent warning.
→ I would copy a similar warning in the transfer confirmation screen:
“Pay Attention!
Transfer to an exchange (CEX) will result in loss of funds. Make sure the receiving address is not an exchange adddress.”
Talisman
Talisman’s warning can be confusing. The CEX use case is not explicitly mentioned.
It may not be clear enough for users. Sending assets to an external address includes decentralized wallets, which is not really at risk here. The critical risk is the CEX scenario.
→ I would rephrase the following underlined part and mention CEX as per the UXB-1 practice.
Next steps & latest updates as of Apr 29 2025
-
Nova wallet:
→ No priorization. UI remains with no warning (the example below would lead to losing assets, the address is a CEX one)
-
Talisman:
→ New UI is ready to be delivered -
Subwallet:
→ Improved the x-chain case in 2024
→ Improved the transfer case with a warning but the same warning that exists for x-chain case would be better
End Notes
Recent issues
- Nova (Apr 25 2025) : Refund Request: Compensation for 57 DOT Lost Due to Missing Cross-Chain Swap Warning on Hydration/Nova Wallet - #10 by 10asee
- Talisman (Apr 11 2025): Bifrost’s Root Track ref
Help Recover DOT: Talisman Wallet's Missing Warning Led to Bifrost-CEX Transfer Error