Design, DeFi and DAI — DDEX @ EthDenver

Only in its second iteration, EthDenver is already becoming one of the most anticipated web 3 conferences of the year. With a great local developer scene, hundreds of great teams flying in from around the world, and beautiful mountains all around to enjoy it’s easy to see why.

This year, DDEX’s own Josh Rio was there to Debunk Design Myths in Dapps and help developer’s find their own Dapp’s happy paths. We think Josh’s design expertise is pretty damn invaluable (it touches almost every product at DDEX), so we wanted to make an effort to share it with more than just the folks who were able to make it to Denver this year. So here’s a recap of Josh’s talk, as well as some of the top takeaways we took from the event.

Want to watch Josh’s whole presentation? You can check it out below, and visit the EthDenver YouTube page for more Dappy goodness.

Don’t Accept Dreadful Dapp Design

The most important takeaway from Josh’s talk (and body of work) is that you should not accept bad design in your Dapp simply because this is the early days of the internet of value. There seems to be a common misconception here in the early days of web 3, that — because it is the early days of web 3 — it’s okay to have design that’s not up to web 2 standards and meant for experienced developers. Well we’re here to tell you no, that’s not okay!

We think bad design only hurts crypto adoption in the short run, and we’re eager to see the community grow together instead of drift into our own little rabbit holes of idiosyncratic design. Here’s a few tips from Josh’s talk on how you can improve your Dapp to help meet the expectation of your users:

• Things Change. The regulations, best practices and technology available change daily so be sure to design your platform with an expectation that you may need to flip some of their elements on their head. Try and architect flexibility as much as you can, and never become too emotionally attached to any one feature or element that you like, only become attached to your users and what works for them.
• Speaking of Users. Context is King! You need to be aware of how users are using your application not just in the application itself, but also in the context of the ecosystem around them. Are they using their phone with Wallet Connect to your platform, and are there any distractions they can find along the way? Are your users leveraging MakerDAO to get DAI for exchanging on your platform? If yes how can you make it easier for them? Never consider your Dapp in a vacuum.
• Beg, borrow and steal. If you see a feature that’s working well in another Dapp, don’t be afraid to emulate it. Everyone is still learning what works in this space, and trends will evolve over time, so there’s no shame in learning from others.
• Keep it simple. Don’t overthink it just because it’s web 3 technology! What works well in web 2 will frequently work great in web 3 as well.

DDEX strives to be one of the easiest to use platforms for those new to crypto, day-traders, and API traders alike. We think it’s pretty crazy to suggest that just because it’s new technology we should accept bad design on top of it.

Interested in learning more about how you can improve your Dapp? Be sure to check out the full video of Josh’s workshop in the video below.

Other cool things we saw in Denver

There’s almost too much to mention, but here’s just a quick bulleted list of some of our favorite projects and trends we saw in EthDenver. Be sure to check them out!

• Austin Griffith’s xDAI wallet was even cooler than anticipated. It was fast, easy, a ton of vendors got paid in DAI over the course of the conference, and a lot of the extra DAI went to charity! Expect to hear more and more things from Austin and the MakerDAO team for years to come.
• DeFi FTW — A good chunk of the finalist were unsurprisingly from the DeFi category of Dapps. With the Delphi team creating an impressive on-chain Eth/DAI oracle and teams like Safe CDP improving the experience of decentralized loans for everyone. DDEX is proud to be among the product leaders in this space and can’t wait to see what is built next.
• Open source ❤ Bounties — we’re starting to see more and more projects embrace projects like GitCoin and take other initiatives to improve their platform through decentralized development. At EthDenver, several teams opened bounties to fill needs or niche’s for their platform and fairly pay the developers who helped improve their projects. We find it pretty exciting to see this economy naturally grow and evolve.

Anything we missed? Feel free to post your own favorites from EthDenver in the comments below.