Speck Finance
Demystifying RWA: How a simplified investment journey helped secure $100,000 in funding from XDC Network.
My Role
Product Designer & Founding Designer. Solely responsible for the end-to-end creation of the MVP:
- Research
- Product Design (UX/UI)
- Initial Design System
- Visual Identity
- Web Design
Duration
6 Weeks · fast-paced MVP delivery
Team
- 1 Product Designer
- 3 Software Engineers
- 1 Product Manager
The Impact
Delivered a frictionless investment flow that successfully secured a $100,000 strategic grant and enabled an on-time beta launch.
Highlights
- Business Impact (Grant): The design and functional delivery of the MVP directly enabled the securing of $100,000 in funding from XDC Networks.
- Pragmatic MVP Scope: Made a strategic trade-off to condense the workflow into essential screens, accelerating engineering delivery and solving the core pain point without "over-designing."
- Web3 Abstraction: Translated complex blockchain mental models into familiar e-commerce flows, replacing heavy compliance forms with a high-conversion Checkout Wizard.
- Designing for Trust: Created a transparent "Transaction Status" UI to elegantly mask manual backend operations during the beta phase, preventing user anxiety.
An opportunity to let everyday investors buy real-world assets — with an MVP built in record time to unlock XDC Network's funding.
Speck Finance emerged to bridge the gap between the traditional financial market and the DeFi ecosystem. The goal was to create a platform where casual and accredited investors could buy fractions of real-world assets (real estate, commodities, etc.) via tokens. With strategic funding from XDC Network, the project needed a functional interface in record time to secure entry into a global investment program.
How do we sell tokenized real-world assets without forcing traditional investors to learn Web3 jargon or abandon complex KYC forms?
The industry baseline for RWA (Real World Assets) platforms was a chaotic mix of disjointed KYC tools, steep cognitive barriers, and intimidating crypto terminology — "gas fees", "wallets", "networks". Beginner investors felt intimidated and dropped off before they ever understood what they were buying.
User Problem: The cognitive barrier of "tokenization" prevented conversion — users did not understand what they were buying or how the process worked.
Business Problem: The KYC process was fragmented and regulatory compliance slowed the purchase flow, causing massive abandonment at checkout.
Making a tokenized-asset purchase feel as simple as an online checkout.
Instead of replicating the data-dense interfaces of complex crypto exchanges, I designed Speck Finance to feel like a familiar e-commerce or home banking experience. By synthesizing the fragmented industry landscape, we eliminated crypto-native jargon and prioritized visual simplicity, creating a unified platform that guides the user confidently from asset discovery to purchase.
1. A step-by-step checkout wizard that replaced heavy compliance forms.
To counter the high abandonment rates associated with heavy compliance forms, I eliminated long-scrolling data entry. I implemented a step-by-step checkout wizard, drastically reducing the user's cognitive load and minimizing human error during onboarding.
2. A transparent status UI that kept users calm while transactions were processed manually.
Due to our aggressive launch schedule to secure the XDC Network funding, the beta phase required certain transactions to be processed manually by the backend team.
The Constraint: Manual processing takes time, which usually causes panic in financial apps.
The Decision: I designed a highly transparent "Transaction Status" UI. This interface communicated progress clearly, managing expectations and maintaining user trust while the team handled the manual processing behind the scenes.
In RWA, visual design is the ultimate trust vector.
This project reinforced that visual design is what separates user confidence from skepticism. If given a longer timeline for the next iteration, I would:
- Implement an automated push-notification system to further reduce user anxiety during transaction processing.
- Develop an "in-app education" flow to seamlessly teach financial terms as users interact with their assets, eliminating the need for external research.
