theDesignIconoclast

I analyzed 6 epochs of @OctantApp data (Jan 2024-Jan 2025) to understand why 75% of stakers claim rewards instead of donating them - even with an 18x matching multiplier. Here's what the data actually shows.

@OctantApp Ooooh yeah!

We’re so ready for Cannes 🇫🇷💝

@eas_eth @BitsaveProtocol @base Nice, real use case!

Builder Highlight! @BitsaveProtocol has tokenized over 60+ real world businesses onchain across Africa. They attest to valid business registrations which enable the tokenized businesses to become a yield bearing asset on @base. Congrats on the progress!!

@SaulWgmi Maybe Web3 as it is needs to burn down. The utter disregard for end users has a price. Make unusable products? Fail. Make irrelevant products? Fail. We have the most advanced infrastructure but but the worst products. That’s the problem.

WARNING: Vitalik says if crypto keeps revolving around pure gambling with zero real-world use, the whole industry could burn out fast.

@StarknetEco Keeping the flame alive! Thanks

STRK is down 98% from its all-time high. and the devs on Starknet are shipping the most advanced privacy protocol in crypto, a provable programming language, and a prover that runs on your phone. right now. in this market. that tells you everything about who's here and why.

@OctantApp @ShutterNetwork Awesome! This yield-for-good proposition is fire

[BREAKING NEWS] Shutter DAO 0x36 @ShutterNetwork has deployed 1.2M USDC to Octant vaults for powering ecosystem growth (you'll want sound on for this one)

@sodofi_ @orishim Yes!! But pushing for more human centred design in crypto is like shouting in the void. Design is not meant to be at the end of the production line. It should be at the start, when one decides what to build…

big thanks to @orishim and the EF use case lab for pushing us to be human-centered product builders building for real people is how we ensure crypto isn't just a solution looking for a problem

today's design thinking workshop was one of my faves now that you can build anything with a few good prompts, the question is no longer about how to build, but rather what you should build design thinking is how you identify what problems are worth solving

@petergyang @figma It allowed me to bring consensus around a product direction when there was none. No tool did it well before then. Kudos.

Screw the haters, I am long @figma

@pmddomingos The damage is real though: how many jobs and contracts lost in anticipation of this « prediction »?

AI moves so fast. Barely a month and he’s already been sidelined.

@thejustinwelsh A definition of freedom

The most successful solopreneurs aren't scaling to $10M. They're simply making more than they did at their job, minus the boss, meetings, and headaches.

Agentic payment? What for? Struggling to see a real use case behind this. The level of trust it requires is not there.

@alvinfoo It’s always been about identifying the right situation to solve for. Not the solution itself. Disruption comes from solving a problem no one has ever seen.

At current pace of technology, companies can no longer survive through purely incremental improvement, u either choose to disrupt or be disrupted.

@Hadley Don’t discount Figma’s real value add: the ability to foster great product conversations. It was never really about the fancy screens. It was about collaboration.

12 years later the VC who passed on Figma’s seed because Google could kill them is finally feeling seen

@liamihorne Channels have true potential. Curious to know why you think people didn’t use them more.

I’ve spent most of my career scaling payments. From 2017-2021, we poured years into building state channels on Ethereum The tech worked, but nobody used it. People used blockchains for trading tokens, not for making payments, and that's why L2s had to come first Agents are the users we were waiting for, and that's why we're stewarding the launch of the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) with channels baked in

@Defi_Warhol Yes! What’s missing for crypto : anchors into real world issues. The tech has a lot of potential, but with no product vision, it falls flat. Productising the tech, that’s the next challenge.

Crypto has had a retention problem since its inception. Other industries don't struggle nearly as much as crypto does because these products are structurally important: • Banking apps are tied to bills and financial obligations • Streaming platforms are part of daily entertainment habits • Social media has mostly replaced IRL socializing Crypto was supposed to restructure finance. Still retains fewer users than mobile gaming. Reasons: → Too many wallets, chains, bridges, security steps – UX is genuinely difficult → Volatility makes it financially risky for most people → Most activity is hype-driven: airdrops, token launches, bull runs Retention improves when people have actual reasons to stay, not just speculate. Until then, crypto stays seasonal.

@felixleezd It takes a different mindset from designers to manage a product vision. The tech industry always hired for aesthetics, not product vision.

Designers are the most underrated hire in tech. Not talking about someone who makes things pretty. talking about someone who holds the whole product in their head. the look, the feel, the strategy, what it needs to become 2 years from now. When building was hard, engineers owned the status hierarchy. made sense. Building is no longer hard. The variance in outcomes shifted almost entirely to judgment. What to build, how to sequence it, how to talk about it. Designers have always trained for that judgment. The rarest versions are the ones shipping products faster than most eng-heavy teams. The variance in outcomes has almost entirely shifted to: what do we build, in what order, and why does it matter. The story is clear from the beginning. You can't retrofit narrative onto a product. Designers know this better than anyone. Before you say "designers have always been valuable"... Yes. But now they *might* be the most important person in the room. Their value compounds like never before. Most founders/companies just haven't caught up yet.

@socoloffalex Same over-promising, same under delivering

Am I the only one who is not even exited anymore about all those new AI tools that are realising every week. Like, meh ok, what ever 😒

Gold. Crypto is plagued by terrible UX. As if it were not designed for the very “people” it’s supposed to save from “tyranny”…

@designbyaron Yes, find the tool the works for you and master it. You’ll become formidable.

Stop telling designers to skip Figma Every few months there's a new tool that's supposed to replace your entire workflow. I've watched designers chase every one of them and ship worse work because of it. Figma is where the thinking happens. That's not something you skip. That doesn't make you less of a design engineer. Stop rotating your entire stack every 6 months because twitter told you to. Find your tools, learn them, and stick with them. The tool was never the master. It was always you.

Transforming infrastructure into products that add value to their ecosystem. Web3 needs it. Badly.

@VittoStack Love hearing about real use cases. Game changer.