DeFi Credit Platform App Design for Reap Exchange

Reap Exchange app overview

Role: Market research, competitive analysis, personas, user flows, wireframing, UI design, prototyping Tools: Figma, Claude Code & Design, Figma MCP Type: DeFi credit platform with a peer-to-peer marketplace

Web3 professionals get paid in crypto, then spend up to a week trying to turn that paycheck into money they can use IRL.

Barriers: 4 to 5 days to off-ramp a crypto paycheck through existing platforms, $100+ in gas fees per paycheck, reported by surveyed DAO contributors, 3 to 6 separate transactions to move crypto into a fiat account

A DeFi mobile app and charge card that gives crypto holders immediate purchasing power through a credit line backed by on-chain collateral, so they can spend without selling.

Functional prototype of a mobile app experience covering deposits, buybacks, rewards, a peer-to-peer marketplace for distressed collateral, and a rotating community savings pool.

Reap Exchange market research

Web3 professionals paid in cryptocurrency need an efficient way to convert that income into everyday spending power. They struggle with the existing off-ramps because they are slow and expensive; for those who rely on them regularly, fees add up quickly. Surveys of active DAOs show that contributors reported paying $100 or more in gas fees per payout. It took 3 to 6 transactions to complete a single off-ramp, and up to 5 days for funds to reach them via non-fee Coinbase or private transactions. The target audience is large and growing. DAO participants went from 13,000 in 2021 to 1.6 million in 2023, and DAO treasuries passed $25 billion by March 2023, so the number of people hitting this pain point has kept on rising.

Reap Exchange competitive research

Coinbase and Crypto.com both offer prepaid Visa cards with competitive cashback incentives to drive adoption. These cards also have the added benefit of working anywhere Visa is accepted. However, further research revealed user complaints that the cards did not meet expectations. A sizable amount is frequently experienced, including being declined, confusing activation flows, and transaction fees that accumulate faster than rewards can offset. On top of that, with the prepaid model, each crypto-to-fiat conversion is a potential taxable event.

Reap Exchange personas

Noting this, I ruled out designing a better prepaid crypto card. Instead, Reap Exchange extends a credit line that's secured by the user's crypto "paycheck". This allows the user to retain ownership of the asset, avoid converting to fiat to skip a taxable event, and ultimately leverage their assets for real-world use. Because the credit line is collateral-backed, the design also had to account for the following scenario: What happens when a user fails to pay or the collateral value drops, leaving the balance uncovered?

This led to an underlying need: a way for members to offload collateral before liquidation forced their hand, which became the peer-to-peer Marketplace. This allowed sellers to maintain their in-app reputation on the platform, building towards better on-platform credit standing, and buyers can purchase valuable assets at below-market value, with Reap collecting the initial contract fee plus marketplace fees for the treasury.

Flow diagrams — Mapped the main tasks to surface how many steps the collateral and deposit flows needed before they felt safe for the user.

Reap Exchange flow diagrams

Low-fidelity wireframes — Worked the main flows through pen and paper, then transitioned into low-fidelity wireframes on Figma.

Visual direction — Early variants read like conventional fintech and didn't resonate with the target audience. Moving to a Neo-Brutalist-style interface offered a rawer, more generative tone that fit users early in their Web3 adoption and differentiated it from competitors running minimal blue UIs. This carried throughout the UI as a consistent interaction language. For example, inset borders and hard shadows throughout, with the shadow collapsing on press, are applied uniformly across every screen in the product.

Reap Exchange visual direction

Dashboard iteration — The Dashboard took the most time because it handles the bulk of user interaction. It went through several rounds of testing, providing concrete direction.

Reap Exchange dashboard

Navigation and style exploration — Produced 57+ frames testing navigation patterns and UI directions across the Dashboard, Wallet, and Portfolio screens and their states.

Reap Exchange navigation exploration

Marketplace flow — Designed comprehensive Buy and Sell flows so members can list their collateral that's in danger of liquidation, while others can buy said collateral below spot. Reap takes a fee on the match and blocks any listing that wouldn't cover the seller's outstanding balance.

Susu flow — Adapted a savings group model, known as Susu in Caribbean diaspora communities, into the app's payout cycle. It is tied into buyback and rewards flows, so saving and spending live in the same loop.

High-fidelity prototype — Exported .fig file to Claude Design to build a clickable, realistic prototype.

Reap Exchange prototype screens

End-to-end financial lifecycle — From onboarding to edge cases like listing expiry, insufficient balance, and purchase lock windows.

Reputation and trust scoring — Designed a trust score and credit-standing indicator on member profiles, surfaced in the Marketplace, so buyers can evaluate sellers before purchasing collateral.

My AI-Native workflow enabled me to iterate at the speed of conversation, using a custom Design System and skill library built specifically for this project to structure the outputs. From Figma to Claude Design, my AI-assisted workflow allowed me to refine entire flows to address gaps that surfaced while testing. I view AI as a build partner capable of matching my hands-on director style, guiding it as it produces the front-end UI, turning informed design decisions into a stateful, realistic, clickable prototype.

Deployed on Instapods, I can now demonstrate the value proposition of a two-sided platform to viewers in real time. I have pitched the project to VC platforms.