Synapse

A decentralized research funding protocol that transforms multi-layer staking, delegation, and governance mechanics into a clear, usable system.

Role and scope
Owned UX across staking, delegation, governance, season creation, and treasury visibility. Built the design system and worked directly with smart contract engineers to align UI states with contract logic and edge cases.

Context

Synapse was a multi-token DAO protocol designed to fund life sciences research through tokenized staking and sub-DAOs ("Seasons").

The protocol logic was defined at smart contract level. The challenge was making it understandable without oversimplifying it.

Problem

• Users had to reason about three interacting token layers
• Each staking deposit behaved independently
• Yield rewards depended on lock duration and treasury splits
• Delegation affected voting power and reward distribution
• Exit flows introduced timing and state complexity
• Governance required clarity across proposal states and outcomes
• The system was logically sound but cognitively heavy.
• The core design problem was reducing cognitive load while preserving protocol transparency.

Key contributions

• Designed the full staking lifecycle from lock to exit request
• Simplified multi-position staking and unstaking with clear state visibility
• Visualized yield multipliers and projections in a way users could reason about
• Structured season creation flows with configurable voting and treasury parameters
• Designed delegation flows that exposed voting power distribution clearly
• Built a modular, token-based design system across dashboard, seasons, governance, and treasury modules
• Worked closely with engineers to map smart contract states to intuitive UI states

Outcome

Delivered a production-ready UX layer for a multi-contract DAO protocol.

Selected visuals