AI Trading,
Zero Friction.

The Context

By Q4 2024, the crypto market was surging, and Telegram had cemented itself as the undisputed town square for Web3. Millions of users were sharing market alpha in group chats, but when it came time to actually execute a trade, the friction was massive.

10x.Trade was built to bridge this gap. We designed an AI-powered Telegram mini-app tailored for crypto "degens," bringing perpetuals (perps) trading directly into the chat interface. I led creative direction, branding and UI design. We brought market insights, trade execution and shareable results into one flow, with plain-language status updates during deposits and trades.

The Challenge

The core problem wasn't a lack of interest in perps; it was a lack of accessibility.

For the average retail trader, deciphering complex Technical Analysis (TA) and candlestick charts is overwhelming. Trading perps relied entirely on guesswork, leading to poor decisions and high anxiety. We needed to democratize TA and make it readable at a glance.

Furthermore, we were targeting an audience highly skeptical of connecting their primary wallets to new, untested DApps. We had to design an experience that felt culturally native to the crypto space, yet exuded enough operational trust for users to securely deposit funds.

The Branding Battleground

I led the Creative Direction, UI design, and all marketing and social graphics.

When I first took on the project, the client lacked a clear visual direction. We cycled through multiple frustrating iterations that weren't hitting the mark. The breakthrough came when I stopped sending static concepts and built an animated presentation. I pitched a bold, highly adaptable "X" logo, designed to take up maximum real estate wherever it was placed, making it aggressively visible and impossible to ignore. Once they saw the branding in motion, the visual identity clicked instantly.

Remove the Charts. Automate the Analysis.

We realized our users didn't want to decipher complex charts; they just wanted to know which way the market was leaning.

Instead of building a daunting candlestick interface, we created a visual dictionary of technical indicators. We took historically complex concepts like the "Golden Cross," "Death Cross," and "Mean Reversion," and translated them into simple, glowing neon graphics tagged with a binary Bullish or Bearish signal.

Inside the Terminal UI, we highlighted the specific technical indicator triggered and provided a plain-English translation from our AI mascot. This approach didn't just simplify trading; it actively promoted technical education without the cognitive overload.

The Viral UX

We turned our core philosophy into a frictionless Telegram UX, engineering out every drop-off point while baking in a viral growth loop.

A Constraint that Shaped the Design

To solve the massive hurdle of wallet anxiety, we bypassed direct wallet connections and designed an internal funding model. However, handling crypto transactions inside a Telegram mini-app is precarious. If a user closes the app or loses connection, they panic about their funds.

We solved this by designing a persistent, asynchronous two-screen flow with hyper-transparent copy. Because the process was independent of the active screen, users could close the app and return later to find it still working. To eliminate "loading anxiety," we built a highly sophisticated, granular loading indicator. Instead of a generic spinner, users saw exactly where their trade was in the pipeline (Receiving trade → Sending to exchange → Awaiting confirmation), providing immediate clarity if an error occurred.