Overview

Cove is institutional DeFi for high net worth individuals, treasuries, and pro traders. I led product design with Storm Labs, founded by Sunil Srivatsa, with Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet) as an investor. The work: turn fragmented onchain finance into one interface with banking app clarity.

## Results - Strong feedback from power users and institutional testers - $1.5M TVL during pre-launch - Two capital raises (~$3.5M latest) - Community growth on Twitter and Discord ## Context & Problem Institutional users understood DeFi. They did not have speed, visibility, or control across protocols. Liquidity was fragmented. Costs stacked up moving between venues. Execution carried MEV and reordering risk. Running positions across protocols added operational overhead. The goal was to hide protocol mechanics without diluting institutional grade functionality: a safe place to allocate liquidity, quickly. Market challenges for institutional DeFi users

Market challenges for institutional DeFi users

## Design Process Discovery with product and engineering, low fidelity flow mapping, prototype testing with early users, Figma handoff into a component library, beta monitoring with live data, then feature launch and iteration. Cove design process

Early work centered on three surfaces: **Insights** for portfolio visualization, a **strategies table** for data heavy traders, and **deposit**, the flow where trust is won or lost. Cove strategy cards

## Product Interface Four principles shaped the UX: plain language over protocol jargon, minimal steps on the deposit happy path, three step flows with clear progress, and one consolidated portfolio view. Cove deposit happy path

Cove vault creation and happy path flows

Numbers lead. Token labels stay short. Tooltips appear at decision points. Rows expand when users need detail without leaving the page. Cove inline tooltips

## Design System Patterns were documented in Figma and handed to engineering: strategy cards, data tables, deposit steps, and status states. New flows reused existing UI rather than shipping one off screens. Cove live product screen

## Brand Brand and product share one surface. Illustration and voice run through the app, not only marketing. I owned flows and visual language end to end. Cove marketing hero

## Reflection Cove reinforced something I carry to other work: translate abstract protocol logic into flows that earn trust in seconds. Technical users still need to see what matters. ## Credits

Status: Live

Client: Storm Labs

Agency: Wonderstruck

Illustration: Caleb Simmons

Reading the market