DEFI • FINTECH • MOBILE
HODL Bonds
A new DeFi primitive for people who believe in crypto's long-term value, designed so holders can stack what they believe in without becoming traders, trusting custodians, or chasing unsustainable yield.
ROLE
Sole Product Designer end-to-end
SCOPE
Product design, UX research, mobile design, design system
PLATFORM
Web, Mobile, Avalanche C-Chain
Crypto promised better rails. But discipline was still manual.
THE PROBLEM
Crypto holders have always faced the same impossible tradeoffs: chase temporary yield or do nothing, hand over custody or manage risk alone, trade emotionally or hold with conviction and get wrecked by volatility.
The tools that existed rewarded traders, not holders. There was nothing built for people who believed in BTC, ETH, or AVAX over years, not weeks, and wanted to accumulate through volatility without reacting to it.
HODL Bonds was built to solve that. The design challenge matched the product ambition: create a single experience that a crypto newcomer, an experienced holder, and a DeFi-native degen could all use without feeling talked down to or left behind. Every screen had to earn trust without adding friction.
"People shouldn't need to become traders to build wealth in crypto, Conviction should be the advantage."
Four pillars that shaped every design decision.
DESIGN DECISIONS
01
CONVICTION IS A SUPERPOWER
Conviction gets you in, then emotion gets you out at the worst time. The entire product is designed to lock conviction into code, so holders stack through volatility without self-sabotage. Every UI decision either supports that discipline or fights it.
02
REPLACE TRUST WITH VERIFIABILITY
"Trust the exchange" has failed. "Trust the vault" is rarely auditable in real time. HODL Bonds is non-custodial. Rules lock at issuance, execution is observable on-chain. The design had to make that verifiability visible and legible to all three user types.
03
RULES BEAT PROMISES
HODL Bonds operates with a fixed tenor, bounded trading sleeve (10–50%), and deterministic settlement. No leverage, no mandate drift. The interface had to communicate those constraints clearly, not hide them, so users trusted the guardrails.
04
TRANSPARENCY ISN’T A FEATURE
Dashboards can mislead. Reports can be curated. But the ledger is immutable and public. HODL Bonds surfaces balances, trades, and fees so holders can track outcomes without needing a trading desk.
Research-led.
Trust by design.
PROCESS
Research, differentiation & feature prioritization
I started with deep research into the competitive DeFi landscape, understanding where existing yield products failed users and what HODL Bonds needed to do differently to earn trust across three very different user types simultaneously.
Core positioning: this is not a yield farming product. It is a conviction product. The terminology, the framing, and the entire information architecture were built to reinforce that HODL Bonds is for holders who believe in their assets and want to stack more of them, on their own terms, without custody risk or hidden leverage. Feature prioritization was driven by that thesis at every decision point.
Research also required dedicated understanding of bonds in traditional finance and market economic landscape.
RESEARCH TOOLS: Claude, American Economic Association Journals [1], Harvard Kennedy School insights [1].
Designing for three users at once: Lite and Advanced modes
The bond minting flow was the hardest design problem on the product. A newcomer needed step-by-step guidance with plain-English language, sensible defaults, and a flow that didn't assume prior DeFi knowledge. A hardcore degen needed full parameter control: underlier token, par value, bullish level, tenor, manager, and DEX. One flow couldn't serve both without failing both.
I designed a Lite/Advanced toggle that let users self-select their experience level. Lite abstracted complexity into a simple bullish level slider. Advanced exposed the full parameter set. Both modes previewed the bond as a real on-chain certificate NFT in real time, giving every user the same trust signal regardless of the path they took.
Lite mode: Bullish Buffer selector with mascot mood feedback and real-time bond certificate preview.
Advanced mode: full parameter control: underlier, par, bullish level slider, bond tenor, manager, and DEX selection.
Mobile-first: designed for where DeFi actually lives
DeFi users are predominantly mobile. Every screen was designed mobile-first, from the minting flow to the bond detail view to the HODL Hub dashboard. The mobile experience had to handle technically complex financial information (projected returns, maturity countdowns, TVL, risk levels, smart contract vault addresses) in a way that was scannable and trustworthy on a small screen.
The bond-like certificate NFT, was central to that trust-building. Seeing it rendered in real time as you set parameters gave users a tangible sense of what they were creating, regardless of their DeFi experience level.
Bond detail: Making on-chain data human
The bond detail page needed to display live on-chain data: vault address, TVL, maturity countdown, implied risk, current vs starting HODL value, and projected returns in a way that felt clear and earned trust without overwhelming users who weren't financial experts.
I designed two distinct states: an active state showing a simulated maturity projection with an explanatory tooltip (so users understood that the projection was live and would improve in accuracy as maturity approached), and a matured state showing settled values with a prominent Claim action.
Active bond: live projection with contextual tooltip, investment period indicator, and simulated maturity today.
Matured bond: final settled state with HODL return, stables returned in full, and active Claim CTA.
Built in collaboration
with Avalanche
LAUNCHING ON AVALANCHE C-CHAIN
HODL Bonds was developed in direct coordination with the Head of DeFi at Ava Labs and the marketing team, launching natively on Avalanche C-Chain with Avalanche Foundation co-marketing support, strategy integrations, and completed audits.
Featured Work
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01 NICE
Led UX for the #1 cloud contact center platform designing omnichannel routing and AI-powered agent tool used by Verizon, Visa, Disney, and Toyota with Salesforce integration.
ENTERPRISE SAAS · B2B · AI
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02 Kingdom Studios
Built the design system from zero for an innovative platform supporting 1B+ transactions with token swaps, staking, NFT marketplace, wallet, and mobile across millions of users.
0 → 1 · UX STRATEGY · WEB3
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03 NICE Supervisor
Redesigned the real-time operations hub for contact center supervisors. Unifying agent monitoring, live intervention, and AI guidance scores into a single scannable surface.
ENTERPRISE SAAS · DATA VISUALIZATION
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04 HODL Bonds
Designed end-to-end for a new on-chain financial product letting crypto holders stack what they believe in without trading, custody risk, or unsustainable yield.
0 → 1 · MOBILE · WEB3 -
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05 meta.us
Established branding and scalable design systems for a global competitive esports platform founded by ex-Blizzard directors, optimizing responsive performance across markets.
ESPORTS · BRANDING · GLOBAL
CONTACT
Let's make
something great.
Maye is a product designer based in Maui designing intuitive experiences for complex products, with deep expertise in UX, design systems, and interaction design.