TraderJoe: founding designer,blank canvas to $4B TVL

Project overview

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I joined TraderJoe pre-V1 as the solo designer and stayed as design lead through every major chapter - V1 launch, Avalanche Rush, Banker Joe (lending), V2 / Liquidity Book, Joepegs, Joe Studios, and mobile. The product became the largest native DEX on Avalanche - peak TVL ~$4B, cumulative volume >$184B.

Client

TraderJoe

Date

2021–2024

Industry

DeFi / DEX

Role

Founding Product Designer → Design Lead

Timeline

~3 years

Stage

0 → 1 → re-platform

Services

Product Design, IA, Design System, Brand, Mobile

Context

In mid-2021, Avalanche had no native DEX of scale. Liquidity sat in forks of Ethereum protocols, and Avalanche Rush - the $180M incentive program - was about to start. I joined the founders before V1 existed: no design files, no tokens, no system. Over the next three years the product grew into a multi-product DeFi platform, and the design layer had to grow with it.

Problem

  • - Pre-V1: nothing existed - no IA, no system, no shipping bar.
  • - Post-launch growth: every new product (lending, NFTs) threatened to fragment the surface.
  • - V2 / Liquidity Book introduced mechanics no DEX UI had ever rendered before.
  • - Mobile users had no first-class experience.
  • - Three years of feature shipping accumulated UI debt that the LFJ era had to clean up.

Selected visuals

Approach

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

  1. 01

    V1 - defining what a Joe surface looks like (mid–late 2021)

    Designed swap, zap, pool, and farm from a blank canvas. Set the IA, typographic system, and personality that carried through every later product. V1 launched into Avalanche Rush; within ~3 months TraderJoe was the #1 DEX on Avalanche by TVL and volume.

  2. 02

    Avalanche Rush era - scale (Q4 2021 – Q1 2022)

    TVL crossed $4B at peak. Designed for sudden scale: order-of-magnitude more LPs, more farms, more positions to render. Tightened density, introduced filtering and sorting on Pool/Farm before tables collapsed under their own weight.

  3. 03

    Banker Joe - lending and borrowing

    Designed Banker Joe (lending/borrowing) as a first-class product, not a tab. Defined how supply/borrow rates, collateral, and health factor render for users who had never used Aave.

  4. 04

    V2 / Liquidity Book

    Liquidity Book introduced a binned-liquidity model no UI had ever rendered. Designed the LP creation flow around bin selection, range strategies, and active-bin visualization - the visual language other Liquidity Book forks copied.

  5. 05

    Joepegs - NFT marketplace

    Designed Joepegs from scratch as a sister product. Browse, list, sweep, royalties, collection pages - built on the same design tokens as the DEX so the two products felt like one platform.

  6. 06

    Mobile

    Built a mobile-first experience for swap, pool, and dashboard. Made TraderJoe usable on phone-first markets without compromising the LP power-user surface on desktop.

  7. 07

    LFJ era - the system held

    By the time LFJ shipped, the design system was three years old and battle-tested. The rebrand was driven by another lead and shipped as a theme switch on top of the tokens, components, and IA I had built - no screen-level redesign required.

Metrics

  • Protocol TVL

    $0 (pre-V1, mid-2021)~$4B (Nov 2021, all-time high)

    DefiLlama · Protocol-wide; design is one factor alongside Avalanche Rush incentives and market timing.

  • Cumulative DEX volume during tenure

    $0~$184B (cumulative across V1 + V2 by end of tenure)

    DefiLlama

  • Avalanche DEX market share

    0% (did not exist)#1 native DEX on Avalanche by TVL and volume from launch onwards

    DefiLlama (Avalanche DEXs)

  • Products shipped under one design system

    06+ (DEX V1, Banker Joe, V2 / Liquidity Book, Joepegs, Joe Studios surfaces, Mobile)

    TraderJoe public launches

  • 30-day average DAU (DEX, 2024)

    n/a (pre-launch)~5,180 DAU

    Token Terminal

  • Annualized fees (2024)

    $0~$4.35M run-rate

    DefiLlama

Impact

  • - Founding designer - joined pre-V1 (mid-2021) and stayed through every chapter to LFJ
  • - Shipped 6+ products under one design system: V1 DEX, Banker Joe (lending), V2 / Liquidity Book, Joepegs (NFTs), Joe Studios surfaces, mobile
  • - Protocol peaked at ~$4B TVL (Nov 2021); cumulative volume across V1 + V2 surpassed $184B
  • - Set the system that let the LFJ rebrand ship as a theme switch instead of a screen-by-screen redesign

Qualitative outcomes

  • - TraderJoe became a design reference other Avalanche DeFi teams benchmarked against.
  • - V2 / Liquidity Book UX was forked alongside the protocol - visual patterns spread to other chains.
  • - The system survived a full rebrand (V1 → V2 → LFJ) without screen-level redesign.
  • - Design team grew from 1 → multiple under a shared system and shipping bar.