Interlay

Building the design system, component library, and wallet infrastructure for a DeFi protocol from scratch.

At Interlay I joined a small early-stage team and built the frontend foundation from the ground up — the design system, reusable component library, and the wallet and transaction flows that users interacted with every day.

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Learnings

Three things building at Interlay that shaped how I think about frontend foundations.

A shared language is infrastructure

When I joined Interlay there was no shared UI language. Engineers were building the same patterns independently, with subtle inconsistencies baked in everywhere. Building the component library wasn't a design task — it was an infrastructure task. Once it existed, every feature got faster to build, more consistent to ship, and easier to change. The compounding effect of having a shared foundation showed up in the second and third month more than the first.

Blockchain UX is mostly invisible state management

A wallet extension can be locked, disconnected, on the wrong network, or not installed at all. A transaction can be signing, pending, included, confirmed, or failed — each for a different reason. None of these states announce themselves cleanly. I learned that good blockchain UX is about surfacing invisible state in plain language: telling the user what is happening, what went wrong, and what they can do about it. The blockchain complexity is real, but what users experience is entirely a UI problem.

Conventions set early compound forever

A small team moving fast accumulates inconsistency at speed. I learned that setting clear conventions early — folder structure, component patterns, hook shapes — is one of the highest-leverage things you can do on a small codebase. It costs a day upfront and saves weeks later. The engineers who joined after me built on the patterns I set, which meant the codebase stayed coherent even as it grew.

Interlay

Building the design system, component library, and wallet infrastructure for a DeFi protocol from scratch.

Learnings

Three things building at Interlay that shaped how I think about frontend foundations.

A shared language is infrastructure

Blockchain UX is mostly invisible state management

Conventions set early compound forever

Contact

Talk to me about engineering, fast cars, or anything that gets the adrenaline going.

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