Meta Vaults
Product design for a DeFi vault system focused on yield optimization and risk abstraction.
Industry
DeFi
Client
mStable
Year
2022
Project overview
MetaVaults is a composable vault architecture built on ERC-4626, designed to help users maximize yield from staking assets while reducing operational complexity. The product abstracts advanced yield strategies into a single vault experience, enabling flexible strategy composition, gas efficiency, and improved risk mitigation against events such as asset de-pegging or black swans.
My work focused on translating this highly technical system into a clear and trustworthy product experience, helping users understand how value is generated, what risks are involved, and how different strategies behave over time.
The Challenge
Making a highly abstracted vault system understandable and trustworthy
Explaining yield generation without exposing protocol-level complexity
Communicating risk in a system designed to operate mostly in the background
Designing confidence in long-term, automated financial strategies
Research-informed approach
Research activities were conducted to better understand how users perceive automated vaults, yield strategies, and risk in highly abstracted DeFi products. Rather than validating specific UI solutions, the goal was to surface recurring patterns and reduce uncertainty around trust, transparency, and long-term confidence.
Key insights
Trust depends on clarity, not yield performance
Users are less focused on maximizing returns and more on understanding how value is generated. Opaque metrics and ambiguous representations of yield significantly reduce confidence.
Jargon and abstraction increase perceived risk
Technical language and hidden mechanics make even experienced DeFi users feel uncertain. Abstraction only works when strategies and outcomes are clearly explained.
Fragmentation undermines long-term confidence
Managing funds across multiple protocols and interfaces creates a sense of exposure and loss of control, reducing trust in long-term automated strategies.
Product behavior & experience
The product experience is demonstrated through real interactions captured in motion. The following examples focus on how users explore a vault, understand its structure, and perform critical actions such as deposits and withdrawals.
Exploring the vault
The vault page is designed as a single point of reference, allowing users to explore performance, strategy information, and risk signals without navigating across multiple interfaces. Clear sectioning and hierarchy help users build a mental model of how the vault operates over time.
Depositing with confidence
The deposit flow emphasizes clarity and predictability, helping users understand what will happen to their funds before committing to an action. Explicit steps and feedback reduce hesitation in a system where value generation happens in the background.
Withdrawing and regaining control
The withdrawal experience is designed to feel as deliberate and transparent as depositing. Clear states and confirmations reinforce a sense of control in long-term, automated strategies.
Design system
To support consistency and scalability across a growing product surface, a shared design system was developed alongside the core experience. Built on top of MUI as a foundational layer, the system was adapted to the specific needs of MetaVaults, defining reusable components, hierarchy, and interaction patterns. This approach helped maintain clarity and coherence while supporting ongoing iteration and future strategy expansion.
