For some time now, we’ve felt that there is a vexing contradiction in the crypto space. Well, there is likely more than one contradiction, but the one we want to talk about today concerns the relationship between cryptocurrency and inclusion.

On one hand, the crypto community places high value on the way decentralization can reduce barriers to entry, and give anyone in the world access to financial and even political independence.

On the other hand… Crypto is hard. It’s hard to understand, hard to explain, hard to get into, hard not to get scammed, and hard to use in real life. And for at least 80 percent of people on this planet — it’s in another language.

Going Local

Most developers of crypto wallets and decentralized applications recognize the importance of intuitive UI and put a lot of effort into making an app that’s easy to figure out. However, still too few interfaces offer localization — interface translations into languages other than English.

While it’s true that English has become the de-facto language of international communication, and that prolific YouTubers create numerous video guides on all subjects, sometimes there is no substitute for an official interface and an official help page in a language you understand.

The MEW Community

MEW doesn’t collect data about users. We don’t know your email, your address, your phone, or your IP address. All we know, from basic internet traffic reports provided by tools like Cloudflare, Alexa and Similarweb, is the number of requests and unique visitors to the website from different countries.

Requests don’t necessarily mean real users. This kind of traffic information may not be a reliable indication of where our biggest communities live. Still, it encourages us to see that our wallet may be helping provide financial access where it’s needed most. Also, it gives us clues about what kind of interface localization might be more helpful, and today, we are starting with the Russian language. MEW now features a fully translated Russian interface, with a full translation of the Knowledge Base to be released soon.

To accompany the translation, we have created an official community page on the social network Vkontakte. We hope that this page will help counteract misleading, outdated, and fake information about MEW on the platform, and provide a familiar environment where our Russian-speaking users can communicate with us, and each other. For official support, you can still contact MEW at support@myetherwallet.com, and on our Twitter.

Babel Fish

In the science fiction classic by Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, galactic language barriers are easily surmounted with the help of the Babel fish — a literal fish which, placed in a person’s ear, automatically and perfectly translates any speech into the wearer’s native language. Despite the existence of Google Translate and other translating tools at our disposal, we are still some ways away from that kind of convenience (although, granted, the convenience of having a fish in one’s ear is arguable).

Some concepts, like freedom and financial independence, are universal. If we can just make ourselves understood, we can build up communities locally and bring them together globally. So, until crypto can become the Babel fish for the global community, self-explanatory to everyone and capable of uniting very different people in one philosophy, let’s try to speak each other’s language.

Multi-lingually yours,

MEWteam

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