Colin Spence
Product Designer
Open for hire

Making on-chain governancefeel approachable and accessible

    Summary

    Over three years at Gnosis Guild, I designed and helped build products across the Zodiac ecosystem — from Tabula, a publishing platform for DAOs, to the Zodiac module interfaces for Roles and Reality, to the Wand App with its upgradable contribution-based NFTs, to integrating Roles directly into the Gnosis Safe flow.
    Just here for the results?

  • Client

    Gnosis Guild

  • Role

    Senior Product Designer
    ux strategy
    frontend development
    visual identity design

  • Timeline

    2021 – 2024
    Full time, multiple shipped products

  • Category

    dao tooling
    web3 app

The Challenge

Each product I worked on served different users with different needs — but all shared the same underlying problem: powerful on-chain governance infrastructure that felt unapproachable. The challenge was designing across this range coherently while shipping individual products that stood on their own.

    Design Approach

  • Tabula: A publishing platform for DAOs

    Designed and developed a publishing platform for DAOs, with on-chain authorship under shared DAO identities. Shipped from hackathon to production in six weeks.

  • Zodiac Modules: Roles and Reality interfaces

    Designed interfaces for Roles (granular on-chain permissions) and Reality (oracle-based proposal execution). The challenge was making configuration manageable for operators, surfacing consequences before commitments.

  • Wand App: Contribution-based NFTs as governance power

    Designed a portal where upgradable NFTs rewarded Zodiac wiki contributions. Each wand evolved visually with participation — making governance influence tangible, not just collectible.

  • Safe Integration: Roles inside Gnosis Safe

    Brought the Roles module directly into Gnosis Safe, replacing a separate plugin workflow with native-feeling permission controls.

  • Tabula — a web3 publication platform built in a 6-week sprint for DAOs who want to publish content on-chain.

  • Tabula article design

  • Flexible pinning services made simple

  • Deterministic avatars actually enable security as it prevents identity theft

  • CRISP — Landing page for Gnosis Guild's Coercion-Resistant Impartial Selection Protocol.

  • Designed and developed the fun demo interface to demonstrate encrypted, verifiable on-chain voting.

  • Role detail view inside Gnosis Safe — members, scoped permissions, and transaction history at a glance.

  • Wand App in production — upgradable NFTs that evolve as contributors build the Zodiac wiki.

Results & Impact

Tabula: hackathon to production in 6 weeks
Designed, developed, and shipped a full publishing platform from initial concept to live product in a single sprint.
Accessible governance modules for wider adoption
Roles and Reality interfaces turned abstract on-chain permissions and oracle-based execution into manageable workflows for DAO operators.
Roles integrated natively into Gnosis Safe
Replaced the separate plugin workflow with a permissions experience that felt native to the Safe interface operators already trusted.

Resources