In the lead up to the much anticipated rebrand we are sharing some of our thoughts and insights along with sneak peaks of features and UI/UX designs on what to expect when we launch our new brand and product in the weeks and months ahead.
As one of the first products in the DeFi space bZx has earned a loyal following of early cryptocurrency enthusiasts and supporters and has built a reputation as a pioneer of DeFi margin trading. Of the many DeFi products that launched only few remain to this day that are continually developing and improving in the way that bZx has.
Since the launch of Fulcrum 2.0 last September, the product look and feel has remained largely unchanged. The primary focus over the past year has been working behind the scenes to make the product smooth, bug free, and easy to use for trading. We eventually planned to address the branding, however never found the time for it as more pressing tasks took priority and the date continued to get pushed back. In just the past three months, our team has been working hard to add support for two new blockchains (BSC and Polygon), a host of new trading pairs, and we’ve introduced farming, and staking in addition to new borrowing and lending pools and trading pairs.
With the upcoming launch of our rebrand and fresh new platform design we are changing all of that by launching a much anticipated new brand name product design, and feel. The goal of the rebrand is not only to modernize and simplify the branding but also to expand our audience and appeal to a wider audience of both crypto veterans and crypto DeFi newcomers.
❓ Why did we embark on a rebrand?
Late last year the entire team joined together to assess the pros and cons of revamping our product branding and design. We decided that the time had come to finally embark on the rebrand process. When considering whether to rebrand we gave a great deal of thought how it would impact our product reputation and community goodwill we had earned over the years. We also considered what we wanted the name brand to feel like, and who we were appealing to.
One topic discussed was whether to keep the name bZx or try something entirely different. Feedback we’ve received from the community encouraged us to experiment with a departure and try something that would resonate with a mainstream audience and be more friendly to newcomers. In part because of this, our team decided to rebrand and change both the name and design and feel of the product.
“Our vision for the new brand is all about bringing cryptocurrency to a wider audience, a fresh simple look to the platform. While still maintaining advanced trading tools for power users.”
By rebranding we bring opportunities for new users to discover our product. Our new branding makes our product accessible by streamlining the growing ecosystem of apps and products so that when new entrants into the crypto space use our product they can easily understand how it works and have a positive experience with it.
When Fulcrum originally launched the entire DeFi was still very new and in the years following our launch the pace of change in the DeFi space is evidence of the potential that lies ahead in the DeFi ecosystem. We wanted our new brand to reflect this feeling of simplicity and ease of use that removes some of the uncertainty for crypto newcomers while maintaining the powerful features of our product for veterans.
Following our decision to rebrand we began a long journey of research and development to decide what we wanted our new brand to look and feel like. After a long process we are finally nearing the end and are nearing the time to announce our launch. We would like to thank the community for all their support and insight along the way to help make it a success!
The launch of the rebrand won’t take place all at once, it will likely happen over the course of time and roll out in phases. However, in the meantime we wanted to share a glimpse of some of the features we are most excited about.
✨ UI improvements
The first place we looked when assessing our rebrand was how users interact with our product. With so many DeFi products copying each other and following a similar design language, we decided to emphasize originality and simplicity with our designs. In order to achieve this we know that font sizes and bold can be used to direct users and clarify proper interactions. We also utilized contrast between sections with light and dark colors together with empty space to draw users to important sections for increased accessibility.
After receiving tons of feedback from our loyal community and doing user research, we knew that many users found the existing interface to be a little bit cluttered and the color scheme needed to be updated, so we have spent the past few months working to clean and brighten it up and streamline. We know that when users visit our site, they want a simple clean experience that easily lets them margin trading, borrow, and lend.
We wanted users to have the option for both simple interfaces but also giving advanced power users the ability to use Pro interfaces with more information and tools to manage trading.
The new product is clear, and direct. It places the user in control of all their trades without overwhelming them with too much information. We integrated strategic splashes of colors thoughtfully to avoid a bland interface and guide users to important areas of content.
✨ UX Improvements
We have continuously iterated to find what the best trading experience is for our users in order to make our platform the best place to trade DeFi on leverage. Our design choices were tested in order to exceed the expectations of our users and deliver the best trading experience possible.
One important improvement was the ability to easily control leverage, monitor open trades, and liquidation prices intuitively. We struck a balance between displaying too little and too much information.
We utilized a card UI with consistent themes throughout in order to satisfy dynamic page content which would fit a variety of screen sizes.
It was important for us to make our product touch friendly as new users are increasingly using touch devices to interact with our products. As a result we made the buttons clear and easy to interact with.
✨ Brand Identity
When assessing the new brand identity, we wanted to meet the following criteria:
- Short, catchy and memorable
- Something appealing and friendly to a wide audience of crypto enthusiasts and crypto newbies.
- Ability to secure the domains and not be confused with any other brand.
- Approved by our internal team members and stakeholders.
After thorough research and planning we arrived at a product branding image and name that we all loved. As we worked through our re-branding we also assessed our core product goals, our company values, and our overall Mission statement. As always we analyzed this carefully to arrive at what we felt best ecompasses our mission and core values as a company. From day one our goal and mission in creating bZx has been:
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“Delivering financial independence by reinventing financial services for a decentralized future.”
Our new design will open our doors to a new audience of users and by making our product accessible and exciting to the next generation of crypto enthusiasts.
✨ New Logo
We loved the bZx logo, but we felt that it doesn’t match the full extent of what bZx has become as a multiplatform ecosystem of DeFi products and services. The new logo and colors match our current product more accurately as a friendly and playful brand for DeFi margin trading. Our new logo represents the entire ecosystem of apps and services.
✨ New social channels
The rebrand will also coincide with a new social media presence with channels being updated as well as exploring opportunities to appeal to non crypto users on non-traditional crypto marketing channels like instagram and tiktok. We will also be harnessing our new brand to develop viral videos and campaigns. Additionally we are assessing whether to incorporate social trading.
👕 Merchandise
We will be releasing the first collection of our merchandise when we launch. The rebrand will bring with it an entire line of merchandise which we will share with our community including t-shirts and will be available for promotions and giveaways.
📱 Mobile-optimized
Our research has also revealed that an increasingly large cohort of users prefer trading from mobile devices. We’ve designed our newly launched product to enable traders to confidently open new trades and make adjustments on the fly from the comfort of their mobile devices.
We have also partnered with EPNS to give users decentralized push notifications of their trades to be alerted if they fall below margin maintenance and risk liquidation.
🤖 Code updates
The rebrand is not just limited to front end updates, we also have included a number updates to the backend including:Code Refactor for better speed and load times, as well as pro/PL/multichain expansion.
🌐 .com domain name
As part of the redesign we are launching a new landing page with a .com domain. When we decided on our brand we understood the importance of securing a .com top level domain in order to appeal to a larger audience of users beyond crypto community who would feel more comfortable using a .com url
🗳️ DAO – Governance side of things
The rebrand will also be followed shortly thereafter with additional steps on our path towards complete decentralization. Moving towards fully decentralized governance is on our roadmap and we are working on a mechanism to enable sustainable, inclusive, and capable funding for continued development and growth of the platform. As we roll out the launch of the rebrand we expect to strengthen the decentralized nature of the protocol. This should include decentralization in each of the following categories:
- Control over the treasury
- Choice of feature and roadmap decisions
- Modifications to platform fees and token mechanics
💰Token renaming
Bzrx token will be renamed after the rebrand and will migrate to a new token.
🌑Commercials & NFT’s
We have created a series of memeable commercials incorporating our brand which will be shared widely among the community for promotional purposes to raise awareness about our rebrand in order to develop brand loyalty. We will also be releasing very limited edition NFT’s in collaboration with Rarible for our upcoming brand.
🍯B. Protocol Integration
B Protocol is a liquidity backstop for DeFi lending platforms. By integrating with B. Protocol, we have the ability to offer our users up to 20x Leverage on margin long and short trades executed on the platform.
🔔EPNS Integration
EPNS provides decentralized push notifications. This integration will enable users to receive position updates including notifications when their positions are nearing liquidation.
🔗Chainlink Keepers integration
Recently chainlink released a new product. Similar to keep3r tasks can be programmed, such as scheduled transactions for liquidation or upkeep of different tasks. We plan to leverage Chainlink Keepers to automate various parts of our products.
🏫 Improved Docs and Education Center
Part of our strategy to grow our userbase is developing improved education and documentation explaining how our product works. When we launch the rebrand we will also be adding a new education center with tutorials, and explainer articles with news and updates about the broader cryptocurrency market and articles with other cryptocurrency news and topics that can introduce our user base to new trends in the DeFi space. This will include a new gitdocs documentation center, tutorials, and a learning portal.
💱 Other items to look forward to
- Newsletter
- Rarible x New Brand
- Limit Orders
- Tom as a Bean
- Permissionless Listings
- Optimism Integration
Conclusion
We’re excited to continue building next-generation tools for DeFi margin trading, borrowing, and lending. Over the coming weeks and months will be slowly transitioning from the current bZx brand to the new brand. In the process look forward to improving the product to deliver a better user experience, and growing our userbase and expanding to a new audience.