Kodex: ENS-native marketplace from browse to lease

Project overview

View archive (May 2023)

Kodex was the ENS-native marketplace - not "another OpenSea filter" but a product designed specifically around how people search, value, lease, and trade ENS names. I joined as senior designer in 2022 and stayed year+, owning browse, offers, profile, lease, dense ENS data surfaces, brand, marketing, and the design system. The product is now closed; the May 2023 surface lives in the Wayback Machine.

Client

Kodex

Date

2022–2023

Industry

Web3 / ENS marketplace

Role

Senior Product Designer

Timeline

~year+ (left before closure)

Stage

Launch → growth (now archived)

Services

Product Design, IA, Brand, Web Design, Design System

Context

In 2022–2023, ENS was having its moment - monthly registrations in the tens of thousands, names like roblox.eth and mazars.eth trading for 20–93 ETH, and ENS becoming the default identity primitive for Uniswap, Ledger, Worldcoin, and PancakeSwap. Generic NFT marketplaces (OpenSea, Blur) treated ENS names as just another collection. Kodex bet that an ENS-native marketplace - with NLP-powered search, lease and subdomain affordances, and ENS-aware filters - would carve out a real category. The design challenge was building UI for a category that had never had a real product before.

Problem

  • - ENS names are not images - the floor/rarity model from PFP NFTs collapses the moment you apply it to "team.eth" or "088.eth".
  • - Power users want filtering by length, character class, palindrome, club, and grace period; beginners want one search box.
  • - Lease, subdomain management, and collateralized lending are ENS-specific affordances that no marketplace UI had rendered well.
  • - The product had to feel native to ENS culture - generic NFT-marketplace chrome would have killed credibility.
  • - Dense, real-time ENS data needed scannability without losing nuance.

Selected visuals

Scroll visual 4

Approach

The principles and concrete choices that shaped the work - what we picked, and why we picked it.

  1. 01

    ENS-native, not NFT-marketplace-with-filters

    Resisted the OpenSea-clone path. Every flow is shaped around what an ENS name actually is - a string with utility - not around image-based PFP rarity.

  2. 02

    Two layers of search

    Similar Search (NLP-powered) for explorers who don't know what they want; explicit filters (length, characters, club, grace period) for power users. Same surface, two mental models.

  3. 03

    Lease and subdomain as first-class verbs

    No marketplace had rendered ENS-specific affordances well. Lease, subdomain management, and collateralized lending were promoted from features to top-level entry points.

  4. 04

    Editorial layer inside the product

    Monthly ENS roundups, top sales, similar searches around top sales - made the product itself a place to learn ENS, not just to trade it. That changed the kind of users who came back.

  5. 05

    Density rules for real-time ENS data

    Sales feeds, top tens, and grace-period scans all share consistent density and scannability rules. Power users can read the page in seconds.

Metrics

  • Investor backing

    Pre-launch (early 2022)Investors include Origin Ventures, Sfermion, CMT Digital, Castor Ventures

    Origin Ventures · Funding outcomes; design is one factor among many.

  • ENS sales tracked through the marketplace

    Pre-launchTop monthly sales include mazars.eth (93 ETH), 088.eth (28.88 ETH), epic.eth (25 ETH), roblox.eth (20 wETH), 1234.eth (15 ETH)

    Kodex Docs (ENS Monthly Roundups) · Top sales by month; market context is the dominant factor.

  • Live product surface during my tenure

    Generic NFT-marketplace UX for ENSENS-native marketplace with browse, offers, profile, lease, subdomain, collateralized-lending, and editorial surfaces

    Wayback Machine (kodex.io, May 2023) · Kodex.io is now closed; the surface is preserved in the Wayback Machine.

Impact

  • - Designed the ENS-native marketplace surface end-to-end - browse, offers, profile, lease, data tables, brand, marketing, system
  • - Set the visual and data language for ENS-specific surfaces, including the NLP-powered Similar Search
  • - Tenure spanned the active 2022–2023 era; product is now archived (I left before closure)

Qualitative outcomes

  • - ENS power users had a marketplace built around ENS culture rather than ported from NFT marketplaces.
  • - Editorial data surfaces (monthly roundups, top sales) gave users a reason to return without an active trade.
  • - Lease and subdomain workflows had a credible UI for the first time in the category.