Industry
Internet Opinion Market
Client
Based
Based — Internet Opinion Market
BASED: The World's First Internet Opinion Market
The TL;DR Based is a SocialFi platform where the internet's thoughts are revealed through tradable markets. It’s the collision of TikTok’s addictive infinite-scroll and Wall Street’s degenerate trading mechanics. Users watch content, scroll a feed, and put their liquidity where their mouth is by trading on whether a trend is BASED or CRINGE. My Role: Head of Design (CDO) As the Head of Design, I owned the end-to-end product design, brand identity, and user experience. My mandate was simple: Frontrun culture. I led the visual ideation, UI/UX architecture, and gamification loops, turning complex decentralized finance (DeFi) mechanics into a hyper-accessible, high-dopamine social game.
The Challenge: Hiding the Matrix from the Normies
Web3 UX is notoriously awful. We had complex AMMs (Automated Market Makers) and perpetual futures contracts running under the hood. My core design challenge was abstracting all of that friction away. The user shouldn’t feel like they are staring at a Bloomberg terminal; they should feel like they are playing an arcade game. We needed a UI that allowed users to execute trades as seamlessly as "liking" an Instagram post. The Execution & Core Mechanics The "Scroll. Trade. Profit." Loop I designed a frictionless, full-screen vertical video feed (Web2-native feel) integrated with hyper-fast binary trading modules. You see a meme, a political debate, or a pop-culture moment? You instantly swipe to buy "Based" or "Cringe" shares. Zero jargon, zero gas-fee pop-ups—just pure, unfiltered market sentiment. Gamification & The Based Banana Cartel To drive insane retention and viral loops, I spearheaded the platform's gamification UX. The Wheel of Based: Designed the micro-interactions and dopamine-heavy animations for our daily spin mechanic ("Grind. Spin. Win."). Status Tiers: Created the visual hierarchy and badge system for the leaderboards, climaxing with the apex predator tier: The Based Banana Cartel. I designed whale-tier profiles to look visually distinct, giving top traders the ultimate flex. The Visual Identity & Microcopy The brand aesthetic is high-energy, provocative, and aggressively fun. I established a design system that leans into Gen-Z internet humor and crypto degen lore without alienating mainstream users. Color & Motion: High contrast, neon accents, and kinetic typography that makes winning a trade feel like a casino jackpot. UX Copy: Purged all boring error states and empty states. Replaced standard UI text with culturally native microcopy (e.g., turning a standard withdrawal success message into a prompt to secure #wifechangingmoney). The Impact Successfully bridged the gap between complex crypto rails and consumer social, delivering an app where users can literally trade the zeitgeist. We didn't just build an app; we built a financialized culture engine.