Tokens distributed: 4.5B
Wallets reached: 8M
Supported ecosystems: 8
Glacier Drop

One of the largest token distributions in blockchain history

Client:
Midnight Network
Role:
Senior Product Designer
Audience:
Token holders
Duration:
9 months
Year:
2024 – 2025
Client:
Midnight Network
Role:
Senior Product Designer
Audience:
Token holders
Duration:
9 months
Year:
2024 – 2025

Phase 1: Glacier Drop

Claim NIGHT tokens based off your Origin address eligibility

Non-interactive demo showing the Glacier Drop token claim flow, from checking wallet eligibility through to a completed claim.

Happy-path flow of a user securely connecting their Origin address wallet and receiving their claim eligibility amount

The problem

Midnight is a data-protection blockchain. Glacier Drop is the distribution that's seeding it. Unlike a traditional airdrop, NIGHT didn't land all at once. Each claim thawed in 4 stages, unlocking a quarter at a time, on a schedule assigned per wallet over a 12-month period.

Token drops had been done before, but not like this, and not with as much public scrutiny. So the margin for error was narrow on a product that needed to take seemingly endless technical complexity and wrap it in a simple, secure, and familiar user experience.

Meet the team

Russ Hepton Senior Product Designer

Olivier Wouters Senior Product Designer

Forks in the road

Four moments the project could have gone the wrong way. Each pivot pulled the work onto a better path, without them, a very different product would have shipped.

  1. Team structure

    Challenge

    I was outsourced in the beginning

    • Waterfall delivery, outsourced through IOG
    • UI-only scope, no upstream input
    • Limited decision-making from outside the team
    Back on track

    Inside the team, leading end-to-end

    • Moved internally to Midnight
    • Planned and executed 2 crucial design sprints
    • Led the design across all three phases

  2. Process leadership

    Challenge

    Engineering making UX decisions to meet sprint deadlines

    • Tech-led decisions, not grounded in user needs
    • Flows over-complicated for jobs to be done
    • UI patterns invented where conventions already existed
    Back on track

    Research bought us the right design

    • Won time for user research & usability testing
    • Clear definition meant clear communication
    • Patterns aligned with real user mental models

  3. Mobile support

    Challenge

    Half the audience locked out by tech constraints

    • Mobile wallets supported only for Scavenger Mine
    • Mobile design scoped, then axed
    • Test cohort left on desktop-only flows
    Back on track

    Mobile-ready by default, even when axed

    • Layout future-proofed for fast mobile adaptation
    • Designed mobile in one afternoon when re-prioritised
    • Axed again, but the option was always there

  4. Hardware wallet delays

    Challenge

    Hardware-wallet support delayed at launch

    • Ledger / Trezor support unavailable at time of launch
    • Layout, journey and copy weren't aligned with delays
    • Security-conscious participants would feel it most
    Back on track

    Layout, journey and messaging adapted in hours

    • Journeys re-ordered to lead with what worked
    • Honest "coming soon" state for hardware wallet path
    • New messaging set clear expectations

Trade-offs

Not every problem had a clean fix. These were four moments where the work meant choosing between two imperfect paths and being honest about what the choice cost.

  1. Continually shifting goalposts

    Challenge

    Unforeseen business requirements changed the scope mid-project

    • Very little time to discover and define
    • Help and support content rewritten down to the wire
    • Marketing website full of gaps
    Accepted

    Reduced definition time, adapted what we had

    • Relied on fewer insights
    • Removed rich contextual tutorials, relied on FAQs instead
    • Marketing site followed only the user journeys we knew were shipping

  2. The "null transaction" warning

    Challenge

    Generic warning read as a wallet-specific error

    • Same screen shown to every Cardano claimant
    • Mistaken for a wallet-specific failure
    • Resulted in some user drop-off
    Accepted

    Restructured the journey to reframe as a solution

    • Copy rewritten to move away from error language
    • Original journeys based on definition had to be reworked
    • Generic warnings used instead of specific error messages

  3. The freedom of ACE mismatch

    Challenge

    New requirements added which contradicted freedom of ACE

    • Email collection added at the end of each flow
    • Social share button inserted at the claim overview screen
    Accepted

    Designed to soften the landing

    • Offered two options to download OR receive claim receipts by email
    • Ensured the share button was as unobtrusive as possible

  4. Unused-address requirement

    Challenge

    "Must be unused" terminology confused users with no rationale

    • New terminology with multiple meanings
    • Users only cared about how to obtain an unused address
    • Drop-off predicted at the address step
    Accepted

    Made the requirement legible at the point of entry

    • Rationale added for something mandatory
    • Hint explainer for the "how" when users likely already had one
    • Added extra explainers to the marketing flow

Phase 2: Scavenger Mine

Anyone could now participate by solving 24 cryptographic challenges a day to claim a share of NIGHT

Non-interactive demo showing the Scavenger Mine phase-two token distribution.

Happy-path flow of a user running through the full month of challenges

Phase 3: Redeem

Redeem your claimed NIGHT in four quarterly thaws over twelve months

Non-interactive demo showing claimed tokens being redeemed to a wallet.

Happy-path flow of user redeeming their available NIGHT from thaw 1

What didn't make the cut

An embedded claim portal

The first claim portal was designed to sit inside the Midnight Network website rather than stand on its own. As the distribution grew in scale and public scrutiny, the claim needed its own dedicated and secure home, so this embedded layout gave way to a standalone portal.

Glacier Drop v1: An earlier exploration of the claim portal layout
Example of wallet selection on a phone
Phone design layout of multiple address fetches happening at once
Example of the mobile design for Scavenger Mine
Example of a rich contextual help card on a mobile device

What didn't make the cut

  • Glacier Drop v1: An earlier exploration of the claim portal layout

    An embedded claim portal

    Glacier Drop v1: An earlier exploration of the claim portal layout which was originally intended to be embedded within the Midnight Network website

  • Example of wallet selection on a phone

    Wallet selection on mobile

    Example of wallet selection on a phone

  • Phone design layout of multiple address fetches happening at once

    Fetching several addresses at once

    The ability to fetch multiple addresses at once was dropped

  • Example of the mobile design for Scavenger Mine

    Scavenger Mine on a phone

    What Scavenger Mine would have looked like on a phone

  • Example of a rich contextual help card on a mobile device

    Rich contextual help

    Example of a rich contextual help card

Retro

I'd definitely have flagged me being outsourced on a waterfall methodology as an issue much sooner, but embedding into the Shielded/Midnight team happened at just the right time for the project.

When things started feeling like they were getting too complex, I'd have taken a moment to sketch out a stripped-back version of what we could deliver as an MVP solution, focussing solely on the jobs to be done as a fallback.

Next project

Marlowe

The first consumer interface for executing financial smart contracts on Cardano.

  • Demo wallets generated: 120K
  • Smart contracts initiated: 1M
  • Smart contracts built: 14K
View project