So speaking from the Riot/Matrix perspective, this is a really interesting phenomenon which we are painfully aware of. For context: we built centralised comms apps before creating Matrix. So we have a direct side by side comparison, and reckon it’s about 6x more effort to do the decentralised equivalent. On the UX side, our centralised apps were actually pretty polished and lightweight - sadly they are gone now (hence in part Matrix), but you can get an idea from stuff like https://web.archive.org/web/20170102145839/http://blah.com/.

So, how come decentralised apps can end up with worse UX than their centralised equivalents? My theory is:

* Harder tech means that more resources get focused on the decentralisation bit

* Harder to find UI/UX designers who understand the decentralisation requirements (although this is changing thanks to blockchain hype)

* Decentralised early users tend to be geeky and push the product in a geeky direction

But the key thing is that pre-decentralisation we probably had a 1:3 ratio of backend to frontend work. Then in Matrix it’s like 1:1, and the dilution on the frontend notices.

That said, this can be fixed, and obviously it’s critical to Riot to fix it. We’ve contracted a proper UI/UX designer at last a few weeks ago and are hunting for more frontend devs.

And evidence it can work: a good example of a decentralised project with decent UX is Mastodon.