Fuero
How do you make undercollateralized DeFi credit, borrowing more than you lock up, feel as simple as a bank loan?
2025-2026
Timeline
UX/UI Designer & Frontend Developer
Role
The Problem
Millions of users have solid credit histories but are locked out of onchain finance. Overcollateralized loans require putting up more crypto than you borrow, defeating the purpose. Fuero needed an interface that made complex financial flows feel safe and familiar, without hiding the risks.
The Challenge
The core problem was presenting multi-step financial flows, such as credit qualification, borrowing, repayment, and KYC, without exposing the regulatory and technical complexity underneath. Users are crypto-native but not necessarily finance experts, and any friction or confusion at a critical step means losing them permanently. I solved it by designing a status-driven UI where the interface adapts to exactly where the user is in their credit journey. Instead of showing everything at once, each screen surfaces only the action and information relevant to that moment: progressive disclosure applied to finance.
Goals
Simplify access to onchain credit
Design intuitive user flows that allow users to understand, apply for, and manage a credit line without requiring prior crypto or DeFi knowledge. The experience prioritizes clarity, progressive disclosure, and confidence at every step.
Build trust through design
Create a visual and interaction system that communicates security, transparency, and reliability: key factors for financial products involving credit and identity. This includes clear states, feedback, and explanations around borrowing, repayment, and risk.
Enable scalable frontend architecture
Develop a modular and extensible frontend that supports embedded integrations, multiple chains, and evolving credit and identity primitives. The goal is to ensure the interface can scale alongside the protocol as new features and partners are introduced.
Background
Fuero was born from the gap between traditional credit systems and Web3. While millions of users have strong real-world credit, they remain excluded from onchain finance due to overcollateralization and complex onboarding flows. The project focuses on translating regulated, high-friction financial processes, such as credit qualification, borrowing, repayment, and identity verification, into clear, user-friendly interfaces. From a design and frontend perspective, the challenge was to make a complex financial infrastructure feel simple, trustworthy, and accessible without exposing underlying technical or regulatory complexity.
My Role & Approach
Design and frontend both sat with me on this one: I mapped the full credit state machine before opening Figma, built the component library around user states, and implemented the interface in React/Next.js. Every design decision had to survive contact with a protocol where smart contracts changed weekly.
Process
01. Discovery & Architecture
Mapped the full credit journey: qualification → borrowing → repayment → identity, and defined the user states that would drive the entire UI. The goal was to understand what data was available at each point before designing any screen.
"I designed the state system before the screens. If the state wasn't clear, the screen couldn't exist."
02. Status-Driven UI System
Designed a component library in Figma built around credit status: each screen surfaces only the action and information relevant to that moment. Progressive disclosure was the core pattern: nothing shown before it's needed.
"The problem wasn't how much information to show; it was when to show it."
03. Frontend Implementation
Built the interface in React/Next.js with modular components designed to support embedded integrations and multi-chain scenarios. The architecture allowed the UI to adapt as the protocol evolved.
"The frontend architecture had to be as flexible as the protocol it represented."
04. Alignment & Iteration
Continuously aligned the design with changing smart contract states and protocol team feedback. Each iteration refined risk communication and reduced friction in the most critical flows.
"Every risk communication iteration came from a real protocol change; we didn't design edge cases in the abstract."
Outcome
The result is a production-ready Web3 credit platform with a status-driven UI that adapts to each stage of the user's credit journey, from application through repayment. The modular component architecture enabled rapid iteration as the protocol evolved, without breaking existing flows.
Tools
