Duckcoin
Duckcoin
Duckcoin
Duckcoin
DELIVERABLES
Product Design
INDUSTRY
Web3 Entertainment
DURATION
2 Months
PLATFORM
Web
DELIVERABLES
Product Design
INDUSTRY
Web3 Entertainment
DURATION
2 Months
PLATFORM
Web
Nobody had designed a crypto platform that felt genuinely fun to be on. We decided to find out what that looked like.
Nobody had designed a crypto platform that felt genuinely fun to be on. We decided to find out what that looked like.
Nobody had designed a crypto platform that felt genuinely fun to be on. We decided to find out what that looked like.
THE SITUATION
THE SITUATION
THE SITUATION
DuckCoin didn't arrive as a polished brief. It arrived as an instinct, a product concept emerging from within Persist Ventures, the venture studio backed by founders of Tether and a network of blockchain and Web3 investors who understand exactly how crowded and how visually exhausted the crypto space has become.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The platform concept was simple in premise and ambitious in execution: a Web3 entertainment platform where users could stake and compete in duck races. Not DeFi dashboards. Not token staking tables. Not another dark-mode interface with green candlestick charts and a font nobody chose intentionally. Something that had never quite existed in the crypto space before, a platform built for the user who wants the thrill of the game without the sterility of the typical Web3 experience.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
When Persist Designs took over, there were some initial screens that had been started, but they hadn't landed. The visual identity wasn't there yet. The energy wasn't there yet. The project needed a lead designer who could start from the real beginning: the feeling the product should create, before a single component was placed.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
That's where the work began.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
THE PROBLEM
THE PROBLEM
THE PROBLEM
The crypto and Web3 entertainment space has a design problem it doesn't talk about enough.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
Platforms that handle real money and real stakes tend to design for credibility, which in practice means dark backgrounds, dense data tables, small type, and an aesthetic language borrowed from trading terminals. The result is a category of products that all look like they were made by the same team, for the same person, on the same Tuesday.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The user this product was targeting, someone with money to play with, bored of the standard crypto interface, looking for something that felt alive, was completely underserved visually. They were being handed the same cold dashboard and told to have fun with it.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
DuckCoin had the opportunity to be something different. A crypto platform that felt like it had a personality. That leaned into the playfulness of its own premise, duck races, staking, competition, rather than apologising for it with serious UI conventions. The design question wasn't just "how do we make this usable?" It was "how do we make this feel like somewhere you actually want to be?"
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
THE APPROACH
THE APPROACH
THE APPROACH
Building a visual identity that had never existed in this space.
Building a visual identity that had never existed in this space.
Building a visual identity that had never existed in this space.
The client came with colour direction, ocean blue, sky blue, deep gradient tones, and a sensibility about the mascot: a duck, but not a cute duck. A duck with attitude. Pixel-art poses. Sunglasses. Duck hands doing things. A character with enough personality to carry an entire visual system.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
From that starting point, Persist Designs built the full visual identity from scratch. The lead designer took the colour instinct and turned it into a system, deep ocean blues as the primary palette, the DuckCoin yellow used as a high-energy accent against the cool backgrounds. The pixel-art duck character became a recurring design element: not just a logo, but a presence throughout the interface, appearing in states, illustrations, and UI moments that rewarded users for paying attention.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
This was a deliberate positioning decision. The users this platform was built for are sophisticated enough to have seen everything the standard crypto aesthetic offers. The way to get their attention wasn't to look more serious, it was to look like nothing else.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
Glassmorphism and Neomorphism as the design vocabulary.
Glassmorphism and Neomorphism as the design vocabulary.
Glassmorphism and Neomorphism as the design vocabulary.
Two design approaches shaped the visual language of DuckCoin: Glassmorphism and Neomorphism, combined with layered gradients. Both techniques are capable of looking cheap if applied without restraint. Applied with intention, they create exactly the kind of premium-but-playful depth this product needed.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
Glass-effect panels let the rich blue gradients breathe through the interface rather than being buried under solid backgrounds. Neomorphic elements added tactile quality, buttons and surfaces that feel like they have dimension, like something you'd actually want to press. The combination created an interface that felt simultaneously futuristic and warm, not clinical, not childish, but genuinely its own thing.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The result was an aesthetic that fit the product's premise: high-stakes but high-energy, expensive-looking but alive.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
Three sprints, one coherent product.
Three sprints, one coherent product.
Three sprints, one coherent product.
The project ran across three design sprints, each building on the last. Sprint one established the visual system, colours, typography, the duck character framework, core components. Sprint two applied that system to the primary user flows: race viewing, staking, wallet integration, results. Sprint three refined, extended, and prepared the full design for development handoff.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
Working in sprints rather than in one continuous push gave the design room to be tested and stress-checked at each stage. The system that came out of sprint one shaped every decision in sprints two and three, which is exactly how it should work.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
Designing for both desktop and mobile from the start.
Designing for both desktop and mobile from the start.
Designing for both desktop and mobile from the start.
The platform was designed as a web application with full compatibility across desktop and mobile. This wasn't a responsive afterthought, it was a design constraint from the beginning. A user staking on a race should have the same quality of experience whether they're on a large screen watching the action or on their phone making a last-minute decision. The layouts, the interaction patterns, and the information hierarchy were designed to translate across both contexts without compromise.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
THE DESIGN
THE DESIGN
What Persist Designs delivered across two months and three sprints was a complete product design system for a platform that had no visual precedent in its category.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
A mascot-driven visual identity built around a pixel-art duck character with genuine personality, poses, expressions, and attitude that recur throughout the interface as moments of delight rather than decoration. A colour system that uses deep ocean and sky blues as its foundation with DuckCoin yellow as the accent that makes every key action impossible to miss. A component library built on Glassmorphism and Neomorphism principles that gives the entire platform a distinctive tactile quality. Full UX flows for race viewing, staking, wallet management, and results, designed to be clear enough for a first-time user and fast enough for someone playing multiple races.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The design work is done. The screens exist. The system is documented. What Persist Designs built is a product that looks like nothing else in the space it was made for, which was always the brief.
Users often fall into “doomscrolling” endless passive consumption of content that offers little meaning or growth.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
The typical social feed is driven by engagement metrics rather than what’s actually healthy or fulfilling.
There is a need for an alternative experience: one that encourages reflection, learning, and intention rather than distraction.
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No pitch. No fluff. Just a straight conversation about your product and whether we're the right fit. Most founders know in the first 15 minutes.
Ready
to take
the next
s
t
p
?
No pitch. No fluff. Just a straight conversation about your product and whether we're the right fit. Most founders know in the first 15 minutes.