In this week’s issue:

• Touch Grass: A DeFi Primer + Marketing Ish—Selling the Plumbing Instead of the Water

• Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3, Crypto + AI Jobs of the Week

Hodl Me Tender: 🔥 Web3 + AI Jobs of the Week

Looking for your next move in (or into) web3, crypto, or AI? Here are some fire openings for this week, all remote, all posted in the past four days:

• Logos is on the lookout for a Campaign Director

• Uniswap is looking for a Senior Product Designer 🔥💰

• The Institute of Free Technology needs a Trader (Technical/Quant)

• Recall Labs is looking for an AI Lead 🔥

• Celestia Labs needs a fab Graphic Designer to join their team

• Caiz is on the hunt for a 3D Product & Motion Designer 🔥

• Serokell wants to find a Rust Software Engineer 

• They (Serokell) also need a Solidity Developer—is it you?

• Aragon needs someone to be their Web3 Content & Social Lead 🔥

• Want to be a Head of Product Marketing at XBOW? Get it. 🔥💰

Want to see your company's job listed here? Reply to this email and lmk.

Remember when Venmo made splitting dinner bills sexy by slapping emoji reactions on bank transfers? (This is still kinda weird to me—voyeurism on bank transfers packaged as “being social” on a payments app?) That's basically what we need for DeFi, except instead of splitting a $47 brunch tab, we're talking about reconstructing the entire financial system. nbd.

So what tf is decentralized finance? Over the past nine months I’ve gathered that it's basically traditional finance (TradFi) cosplaying as code.

Instead of banks, you've got smart contracts (automated programs that facilitate transactions between parties on the blockchain). Instead of loan officers, you've got algorithms. Instead of waiting days upon business days for your money to move, everything happens in minutes (when the network isn't congested and gas fees aren't astronomical).

The TL;DR on what you can actually do in DeFi

• Lend money and earn actual interest (not the insulting pennies your bank throws at you)

• Borrow against your crypto without selling it (useful when you're diamond-handing to the moon—which I just learned means holding your crypto long-term because you expect it to go way up in value)

• Swap tokens (trade) without going through exchanges that require your firstborn's social security number and blood type

• Provide liquidity to trading pairs and earn fees (though after issue twenty-two’s liquidity pooling PSA, maybe don't)

• Stake tokens to help secure networks and earn rewards (like getting paid to be a good neighbor)

The promise? Cut out the middlemen, democratize access to financial services, and maybe—just maybe—stop letting traditional banks profit off your money while paying you 0.01% interest like it's 1995.

The reality? It's not exactly plug-and-play yet. But people (not me) are working on it.

Why your mom isn't swapping tokens (yet): the adoption gap is real

tbh DeFi has all the ingredients for mainstream success—better rates, more control, 24/7 access—but so much of it is wrapped in an interface that makes tax software look intuitive.

The current user experience:

1. Create wallet (don't lose seed phrase unless you want to lose everything forever)

2. Buy ETH or BTC or other coin on exchange (pay fees)

3. Transfer to wallet (pay more fees, pray you copied address correctly)

4. Connect to DeFi protocol (sign transaction, pay gas)

5. Approve token spending (another transaction, more gas)

6. Actually do the thing you wanted (yet another transaction, you get it)

7. Monitor constantly because DeFi doesn't sleep and neither should you

Compare this to once you’re set up in traditional finance: open app, tap button, money moves.

The future of finance is at our fingertips (and I’m so here for it), but we still need to make it feel more familiar. Which brings me to my current obsession...

Skeuomorphism: making new things look like old things (and why seeking comfort isn't as basic as I thought it was)

Remember when I mentioned skeuomorphism last week? Well, I've been thinking about it as a framework ever since.

That Farcaster convo really stuck with me—how skeuomorphism seems "basic," and it is. But it's less basic bitch, more basic human need. Like, we're talking fundamental cognitive psychology here. Users depend on elements and interfaces acting in ways that feel familiar, not because they're intellectually lazy, but because familiarity equals safety. And safety is a basic human need, right up there with food and shelter.

The (basic) psychology behind our need for familiar interfaces:

• Cognitive load reduction: The more a design reflects how people already think and talk, the more intuitive it feels

• Predictability: Familiar patterns let us navigate confidently without fear of making mistakes

• Control: When interfaces behave as expected, users feel in control of their experience

• Trust: Predictable interactions create trust in the product as well as the brand

DeFi desperately needs its skeuomorphic moment. Instead of "liquidity pools" and "yield farming," what if we called it what it actually is?

DeFi translations that make the general public feel comfy:

Don't get me wrong, I love the lexicons that form around and through cultures and subcultures and niche communities. As someone with a background in web2 SaaS product positioning, marketing, and brand voice (nerd alert, I know), I also understand what long-term wider adoption might entail.

• Liquidity pool → Community investment fund

• Yield farming → High-interest savings (with a side of risk)

• Staking → Locking money for a set time to earn rewards + support the network

• Smart contract → Automated financial agreement

• Gas fees → Transaction costs (just be honest about it)

The magic isn't dumbing it down—it's making the complex feel approachable by anchoring it to concepts people already understand. This applies to visual design, interface patterns, AND the words we use to describe things.

Skeuomorphism isn’t just training wheels—it’s bridge-building. And when we skip that bridge, we don’t look cool or cutting-edge. We just look like a product no one wants to use.

Generous takeaway? Making elements feel familiar doesn’t mean we’re insulting anyone's intelligence—it just means we're respecting their humanity.

Note: at this point, you can either read on for a full-on product marketing nerd out that no one asked for, or, I’ll see you next week. Either way, 🖖🏽.

The marketing problem: we're selling the plumbing, not the water

Like I said, I’ve spent years in web2 marketing, and so watching the majority of DeFi marketing is like watching people try to sell cars by explaining internal combustion engines. Technically impressive, completely missing the point.

What DeFi marketing currently sounds like: "Revolutionary trustless peer-to-peer protocol leveraging automated market makers and liquidity mining mechanics to optimize capital efficiency across multiple blockchain networks."

Cool cool cool.

What it should sound like: "Earn 8% on your savings instead of 0.1%. No minimum balance. No monthly fees. No banker judging your Starbucks habit."

The positioning problem:

• Feature-focused instead of benefit-focused

• Technology-first instead of user-first

• Complex jargon instead of simple value props

• Selling the how instead of the why

The best DeFi protocols will be the ones that hide their complexity behind familiar interfaces. Think about how Uber never made you learn about GPS algorithms or surge pricing mechanics—you just tapped a button and a car appeared.

The basic human needs hiding in your DeFi interface

tbh: underneath all the talk of revolutionary financial infrastructure, people just want to feel safe with their money. And there's nothing basic about that.

What users are actually seeking in financial products:

• Security: "Will I lose my money?"

• Control: "Can I get my money when I need it?"

• Understanding: "Do I know what's happening with my money?"

• Progress: "Is my money working for me?"

• Belonging: "Do I fit in this financial system?"

These map directly to fundamental psychological needs. DeFi interfaces that acknowledge this aren't being patronizing—they're being human-centered.

The most successful traditional fintech companies already figured this out. Venmo didn't succeed because it had better technology than PayPal; it succeeded because it made peer-to-peer payments feel social, cute, and safe. Robinhood didn't win by having more features than E*TRADE; it won by making investing feel approachable, familiar, and cool.

While the tech obviously needs to work, how your product makes people feel matters more than what it technically does. Like, a DeFi protocol can have the most elegant smart contracts in the world, but if using it makes people feel stupid, anxious, or excluded (or if it promises 20% APY but delivers losses), they won't stick around.

A path forward: evolution, not revolution

While I do wish DeFi would replace TradFi overnight, it doesn’t have to. All it needs is to be better at specific use cases and gradually expand from there.

The wedge opportunities:

• International remittances (cheaper than Western Union)

• High-yield savings (better than traditional banks)

• Flexible lending (faster than traditional loans)

• 24/7 trading (markets never close)

Like, start with the obvious wins, nail the user experience, then expand. It's the same playbook that worked for every successful fintech company, just with different infrastructure.

Because the future of DeFi adoption isn't flashy rainbow interfaces or gamified yield farming—it's making financial services so seamlessly familiar you forget you're using cutting-edge blockchain technology.

PS: Subscribe now if you want in on this arithmetic. Miss the last issue? It’s right here. Also literally none of this is ever financial advice. I’m sharing what I learn through Babe, and perhaps you’ll learn from my mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, who knows, ily.