Intro
Team
William Starr, PM
James Rezendes, SWE
Daniel Steigman, SWE
Timeline & Status
Launched
September 4th 2023
My Role
Product Direction
Brand
Marketing site
Web App
Intro
Fun.xyz imagined a decentralized financial future
Fun.xyz was founded in November 2022 to create a smart contract wallet SDK. When I joined, the team was been building without much consideration for the user experience.
Back then, most account abstraction companies didn’t think about about user experience. Most products in the were catered towards web3 developers but not accessible to web2 developers. Fun.xyz’s mission is to connect the web2 developers with the valuable tools of blockchain. It was obvious to me that a thoughtful user experience would be crucial.
Fun’s landing page - Feb 2023
Branding
The Brand & Marketing
When it comes to branding for new tech startups, simplicity is the main goal.
Although branding is important, spending excessive time and energy on finding the perfect brand or logo when you're still developing your story (which doesn’t exist) won't necessarily help you achieve product-market fit.
It's important to understand the internal and external goals achieved by a strong brand. It provides customers with a memorable identity, fosters trust, and conveys your company's values. Additionally, the brand plays a symbolic role by uniting employees around a common mission.
As a financial infrastructure company, we wanted to portray trust and simplicity.
Slides & brand icons
After aligned on brand and direction, I designed our marketing pages. You can explore the full site at Fun.xyz.
Fun’s landing page - Now
Web Product
Developer portal
When I joined, Fun.xyz had an early design of their developer portal but it wasn’t intentional both in terms of functionality and design. Around June 2023, we began to redesign and build the web application.
The new developer portal was launched in September 2023 and is currently supporting over 100k monthly transactions.
Web App Design Process
We aimed to empower web2 developers with web3 features while abstracting blockchain complexities and providing visibility into their activity. We undertook the ambitious project to design and build the app in less than three months.
We started by determining critical information to use our SDK. Since our team comprised of both crypto-native and web2 developers, I met with web2 developers to understand their questions and how to connect web3 concepts to their existing knowledge.
Etherscan Transaction
After establishing clear requirements, I moved into app sketches and then iterated through Figma prototypes with our web engineers. After several rounds of iteration, we had established a strong foundation of user flows and moved into high fidelity designs.
Creating your first FunWallet
Creating your first wallet can be intimidating because it requires a lot of configurations. We took an opinionated stance and helped our users create a wallet with just a few clicks. We show them how to transfer this action to leverage the SDK in their own applications.
Wallet creation & transfer tutorial
Wallets & Transactions
Representing wallets & transactions was an interesting and challenging exercise. We wanted to make something technically quite complicated (a gas-less, multi-signature wallet) into something accessible to web2 developers.
We wanted our developers to quickly identify a wallet's configuration and activity.
Wallet & transaction details
Gas Sponsors
Gasless transactions: In addition to wallet creation, Fun.xyz offers tools for business to offer gasless transactions. Our goal is to power builders who wanted to make crypto apps mainstream. Our gas sponsor launched in September 2023 and are now used by 500+ companies.
Sponsoring gas fees
Retrospective
Building a design culture in web3
At the startup, we often worked under tight schedules and evolving requirements. I learned that 'design work' extended beyond logos and user interfaces; it involved nurturing the company's design culture. This included teaching others the value of design, assembling a design team, and promoting a design-friendly atmosphere.
Since Fun.xyz, I've noticed several account abstraction companies embracing design's potential for both their growth and the industry as a whole. Building the design foundation for a rapidly growing startup in a dynamic market was an intriguing and fulfilling experience.
Next up: Investor onboarding
