/Redacted.

/2024-25/

Hand holding a sleek black smartphone or mobile device against a light background

Client

Redacted

Timeline

2022-25

From back-of-the-napkin idea to a foundational defi brand that cut through peak-cycle mania

Led design from launch through the protocol's evolution into Dinero and its eventual acquisition by Plume.

Redacted V2 BTRFLY Operations Manual graphic

Image of marketing graphic for redacted featuring butterflies

/Key Decisions/

Redacted launched at the very top of the 2021–22 bull market- millions raised in a community token offering, a sharp and well-networked founding team, enormous attention. And a brand that was, literally, clip art. In a season of OHM forks and seven-figure NFT drops, the risk was existential in a reputational sense: if the brand read as unserious, the token launch and product cycle could fail simply by looking irrelevant to the moment. I saw the gap, recognized I was uniquely positioned to close it, and moved.

While the market trended toward slick, laserwave-inspired polish (think Solana), the founders and I deliberately went the other way- because that polish wasn't us, and wasn't our audience. Our users were nostalgic, technical DeFi power users. So the identity went high-contrast, gritty, organic, old-school. Redaction as a system. Leaning hard into redaction/blackout marks across marketing- secret-society, leaked-alpha, insider energy that matched both the name and the psychology of the audience. Counter-trend by design. High-contrast palette and gritty textures to stand in deliberate contrast to the mainstream, signaling substance over hype. Cultural sourcing as craft. I dug through the Internet Archive for high-res scans of 70s/80s tech magazines (Omni and the like), remixing vintage ads into our materials- giving the brand cultural references that landed deeply with our base.