Retroactive Public Goods Funding, Voting UX for a $40M Allocation
I co-designed the core voting experience for Optimism's RetroPGF Round 3, helping badgeholders confidently allocate $40M+ USD across 200+ public goods projects by clarifying system state, comparison workflows, and irreversible actions in a live governance environment.
Contributor Onboarding and Governance Ops UX
Governance breaks down quietly when roles, process, and next steps aren't clear. At Gnosis Guild, I turned informal coordination patterns into legible, repeatable workflows — helping distributed teams move proposals forward, onboard contributors, and ship without constant meetings.
A full rebrand and product redesign for a decentralized exchange — in one week
In a single-week design sprint, I led the redesign of ZigZag's onboarding, account setup, and core trading flows — delivering a testable prototype, refreshed identity, and user-validated direction for a decentralized exchange built on ZK Rollups.
Elemental is a generative audio/visual experience that explores the essence of our natural world. Each token represents one of seven elements - fire, mineral, forest, earth, water, air, and plasma.
Every single millisecond, each flower will change its colors slightly in relation to the time of the season. Each edition will is assigned with 4 palettes that the flower will transform between as the seasons pass.
Actifit is a web3 app that allows users to earn rewards for their physical activity, and I designed the branding, visual identity, and product experience for the platform.
Typing.com is an edtech platform for teaching typing skills, and I simplified curriculum navigation and strengthened classroom management workflows for teachers and students.
Over the last fifteen years, my work has sat at the intersection of systems, design, and emerging technology. I've helped build and shape products across fintech, education, crypto, and AI, often stepping in where things are complex, loosely defined, or evolving quickly, and making them usable, durable, and understandable.
I'm drawn to work where precedent is thin and the rules aren't fully written yet. Where tools, incentives, and norms are still being defined, and early decisions meaningfully shape how systems evolve.
Along the way, I've worked with organizations like The Ethereum Foundation and Optimism on public goods funding, and worked on products like Safe and Gnosis Pay, where the goal was to make self-custody and crypto payments feel obvious rather than intimidating. I've also helped rebuild Typing.com, a free platform that helps tens of millions of students and teachers across the world, and contributed to causes and movements I believe in, from Yang 2020 to work with Amnesty International.
My interest in new organizational models, particularly DAOs, eventually led to a conversation with TIME Magazine about what it's actually like to work inside them.
DJing for many years led me to co-found Night Vision, an underground electronic music project that shaped how I think about communal experience and participation.
Being a parent of two has been a reliable way to stay grounded, especially when deciding what actually needs to be complicated and what doesn't.
Today, I focus on building systems that can handle real-world complexity, scale responsibly, and continue to work long after the initial excitement wears off.
He is the rare combination of technically skilled and profoundly creative.
The breadth and depth of Colin's talents never cease to amaze me — he is the rare combination of technically skilled and profoundly creative — Colin can code an amazing website just as easily as he can explore, define, and set a brand's visual identity as well as everything in between.
Annie Beyer
Yang2020, Creative Director
When I think of Colin's work, I think of the word clean.
Immensely creative, diligent, and quick, I found it super easy to work alongside Colin and I still admire him to this day. When I think of Colin's work, I think of the word “clean”. Seeing him in action I know that these clean designs only come from deeply understanding the stakeholder needs, thorough research, careful planning, and expert execution.
Julian Rosado
Teaching.com, Product Designer
Colin was without a doubt one of the central linchpins keeping our marketing efforts together.
Colin began working with the Yang2020 campaign in early 2019, when the staff was still single digits. As our staff scaled by 30x through 2019, Colin was without a doubt one of the central linchpins keeping our marketing efforts together. He worked swiftly and communicated clearly which saved the day many times as we maneuvered our crazy rocket ship.
Andrew Frawley
Yang2020, Communications Manager