Context
Gauntlet drives understanding and adoption in the financial systems of the future, revealing optimal paths for DeFi protocol growth by applying comprehensive risk simulation to rigorous research, maximizing returns while managing potential risks.
DeFi, or decentralized finance, aims to improve on many traditional banking functions with peer-to-peer alternatives on open networks without centralized intermediaries. Addressing current challenges, particularly in security and usability, is crucial for mainstream adoption and long-term success.
Gauntlet wanted to support their business goals by consolidating existing product surfaces, migrating off a 3rd-party backend, and improving the overall product experience. We partnered with Gauntlet to promote their unique DeFi offering across several key dimensions.
Competitive Analysis
Identify areas for differentiation, better understand strategic approaches, dig into interaction details.
Comprehensive User Stories
Provide a common language between stakeholders, think from the user’s perspective, and tailor product features to key user groups.
Product Design and Development
Improve information architecture, cleanup technical debt, and prototype clearer core functionalities.
Solutions
We led efforts to understand Gauntlet’s position via competitive analysis and developing user personas. These efforts helped us prioritize powerful product design and development efforts for Gauntlet’s front and backend systems.
To ground the product strategy and set a clear design direction, we conducted a targeted analysis of adjacent tools ranging from crypto-native platforms to traditional financial dashboards. We examined how other products structured their navigation, surfaced complex metrics, and guided users through layered functionality.
This work helped us identify patterns, gaps, and conventions, as well as where Gauntlet could stand out in clarity and control. The findings shaped our design principles and prioritization, informing everything from structural decisions to visual pacing.
Understanding the landscape allowed us to identify differentiation opportunities for Gauntlet, particularly through clarity, structure, and usability, without sacrificing the rigor that defines its models.
Insights
01
Know your neighbors
We benchmarked competitors across UX patterns and mental models to surface gaps and clarify Gauntlet’s distinct approach to surfacing risk.
02
Form follows function
Gauntlet’s opportunity wasn’t just in visual upgrades, but in organizing information in ways others hadn’t, centering real-world decision-making needs.
03
Differentiate with restraint
We recommended staying focused on core value delivery, rather than over-indexing on technical novelty or visual complexity.
To align Gauntlet’s product, design, and engineering teams around user needs, we developed a detailed set of user stories that reflected how different audiences—protocol teams, DAO participants, large token holders—engage with the platform.
These stories gave shape to the product’s core use cases and helped clarify what each audience needed to see, do, and understand at each step. Internally, they became a shared reference point, streamlining prioritization and reducing ambiguity during design and implementation. The result was a product strategy more grounded in behavior, less reliant on assumptions, and easier to scale across teams.
We developed user stories that helped internal teams prioritize from the user’s point of view, bridging strategy, design, and execution.
Insights
01
Build from the outside in
Thinking from the user’s perspective helped internal teams reframe design decisions as user outcomes, not just implementation challenges.
02
Model behavior (not just goals)
Our stories not only captured what users wanted, but how they actually moved through the product, revealing overlooked friction points.
03
Speak the same language
Creating shared reference points helped streamline collaboration across teams, allowing for reduced ambiguity and more efficient decision making.
Gauntlet’s product had grown quickly across multiple dashboards and protocols, creating inconsistencies both in the interface and under the hood. While its offerings were powerful, the complexity caused cognitive overhead for users and technical debt for internal teams. We worked with product and engineering teams to streamline information architecture and simplify navigation, while also supporting a backend migration that reduced technical debt and improved long-term maintainability.
This dual-track approach led to a product that was both easier to use and easier to expand. We delivered prototypes, structure recommendations, and UX principles that scaled across Gauntlet’s growing protocol and user base.
We helped streamline both the interface and the underlying systems, making the product easier to use, easier to navigate, and easier to maintain.
Insights
01
Reduce surface, increase signal
We consolidated entry points and surfaced key views earlier, making it easier for users to find insights and take action.
02
Clarity without compromise
We introduced progressive disclosure and contextual guidance that supported learning without hiding the product’s sophistication.
03
Build front to back
UX simplification was matched by backend cleanup, enabling smoother navigation, more consistent user states, and fewer rendering inconsistencies across protocols.
Outcomes
DeFi’s critical infrastructure relies on Gauntlet's expertise and recommendations, advancing the industry’s understanding of crypto-native economics with powerful predictive capabilities for risk management and pattern-matching.
Our work for Gauntlet began with understanding the market and their users, informing what different audiences needed for the platform, and where they could differentiate. From there, we paired UX improvements with backend architecture updates to simplify navigation, reduce redundancy, and create a scalable framework across protocols.
This work prompted accelerated rollout from key partners, including top protocol companies, and led to hands-on collaboration with leading protocols working closely with the Gauntlet team to implement the redesigned product in ways that supported their most important data and product priorities.
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