What slop looks like in crypto and web3
Dark mode, a glowing sphere or a particle field, "The future of decentralised finance", a tokenomics pie chart, a roadmap with four quarters, a "Backed by" logo wall, and a team of avatars. The whitepaper link opens a PDF of the same page.
What a designer would have done
What the protocol does in one sentence, the contract address, the audit with a link, the team with names, and the numbers that exist today rather than the ones promised next quarter.
Tells to check first
- Glowing blobs and orbs: Blurred circles of colour floating behind the content, or a glowing orb as the hero image of a product that has no shape.
- Permanent dark mode: A near-black page for a business that has no reason to be in the dark: a bakery, a physiotherapist, a tax advisor.
- Logos of companies that never heard of them: A "Trusted by" row of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix logos on a six-week-old company with no case study.
- A team that does not exist: An "Our team" section with generated portraits and names, or stock people presented as staff, for a business that is one person.
- Suspiciously round numbers: "10,000+ happy customers", "99.9% satisfaction", "500+ projects delivered", on a company that registered its domain this spring.