DeFi work — AP3

AP3

04 / 09

Project period2022

Marginfi

Black Box

From the waiting room to the vault.

Role: Product, brand & motion design
Medium: Web app
Delivered scope: DesignedWaiting Room → Vault

Historical interface · illustrative financial values

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Case study Vaults & participation · 2022

Black Box

Black Box was mrgn's early consumer vault: people deposited into a Waiting Room, then moved into a yield-earning vault when selected. I designed the product, brand, and motion. When Mango Markets was exploited in October 2022, I designed the Waiting Room explainer that told depositors where their funds sat.

Product & identity

Problem

Depositors needed to follow their funds from deposit to an active vault and, in October 2022, to understand what an exploit on a connected trading venue meant for them.

Approach

Use two explicit product states, the Waiting Room for deposits and selection and the vault for active yield, and make the Waiting Room the place to explain risk as events unfolded.

Design delivery

Designed the deposit, waitlist, acceptance, account, and vault states, the brand and launch film, and the Mango exploit explainer. Deposits reached about $2M by my recollection, a figure not yet independently verified.

Selected artifacts

Product & process.

Product states, decisions, and the system behind them.

From deposit to vault

Users deposit into a Waiting Room, then move into the yield-earning Vault when selected.

Blackbox full UX flow — Complete user flow - from onboarding through deposit, waitlist, and vault activation

Selection, made explicit

Status stays explicit from deposit through waitlist position and vault activation.

Waiting Room and Vault overview — The Waiting Room (deposit + waitlist) and The Black Box vault (earnings dashboard)

Deposit flow states — Connect → Deposit Prompt → Deposit Success

Not selected — Not-selected state with example waitlist position #472.

The Black Box deposit interface — The Black Box - deposit interface with vault mechanics background

Accepted into the vault

Acceptance states expose position status, deposits, and withdrawal options.

Black Box acceptance states — All acceptance states - position active, deposit field fill, wallet connected, withdraw

MarginFi Account modal — MarginFi Account - total value across MarginFi and Mango equity

Designing trust during the Mango exploit

In October 2022, Mango Markets, one of the trading venues marginfi's v1 protocol connected to, was exploited for more than $100 million. Black Box held user deposits at the time, and depositors needed to know what it meant for their funds. The Waiting Room became the place to explain it.^1,2

≈$2Min user depositsMy recollection; not yet independently verified.

The Waiting Room's Mango exploit explainer: 'Learn about how we isolated risk during the Mango hack', with the note that mrgn borrow-lend vaults operate in isolated silos relative to the Waiting Room pool, beside the vault diagram with Mango at its center — The Waiting Room explainer, designed during the Mango exploit. It explains risk isolation; it does not guarantee that funds were safe.

The Waiting Room explainer, designed during the Mango exploit. It explains risk isolation; it does not guarantee that funds were safe.

The challenge: Depositors faced real uncertainty about their funds and about protocol security, and needed an answer they could understand.
The response: I designed an explainer inside the Waiting Room. Its message was that mrgn's borrow-lend vaults ran in isolated silos, separate from the Waiting Room pool. Because the Waiting Room was a live product surface, we could update the explanation in real time.
The intended benefit: A plain-language account of where deposits sat, in the same place people managed them, without promising outcomes.

A campaign built on the vault door

Vault-door blueprints anchor the rebrand and outdoor campaign studies.

Vault billboard - building — Billboard mockup - red brick building

Vault billboard - London street — Billboard mockup - London street at night

The pattern, reused

The Liquidity Incentive Program adapts the waitlist-to-activation pattern for LP onboarding.

Liquidity Incentive Program flow — Liquidity Incentive Program - adapted from the Blackbox UX pattern

Brand motion - the Waiting Room launch film

Explore the Figma

The full Waiting Room V3 design file.

Waiting Room V3 - the Black Box design file. Open live ↗

Phase 3 Activation - the Black Box design file. Open live ↗

References & further reading

01
UTPs (opens in a new tab)
marginfi v1 documentation
marginfi v1 margin accounts traded through Mango Markets and 01 Protocol.
02
How Market Manipulation Led to a $100M Exploit on Solana DeFi Exchange Mango (opens in a new tab)
CoinDesk · 12 Oct 2022
The exploit and its scale: more than $100 million drained.

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