I’m not a designer, but I designed a logo seen 5M+ times

Half a day in Figma. Mirror VeChain’s “V” into a “W”. Ship.

That logo now sits on the home screens of millions of VeWorld users.

This isn’t a story about design skill. I don’t have any.

It’s a story about what happens when you realise you can just do things.

⸻

The belief I had (and the reality that replaced it)

I used to think “real products” get built by specialists. Designers design. Engineers engineer. Product people write docs.

Then I joined VeChain in June 2022 and got handed a blunt task:

Build a crypto wallet.

I’d never built one. No playbook. No instincts. Just a deadline.

So I did the only thing that works when you’re lost: I stole reality from the market.

I lived inside MetaMask and Phantom. Used them like a normal user. Then tried to break them like an annoyed one.

And I realised wallets aren’t complicated. People just want three things: 1. Don’t lose my money 2. Let me do things (connect, swap, mint) 3. Show me what I own

Everything else is theater.

⸻

The “wrong” call we made on purpose

Everyone told us: “Go mobile-first.”

They weren’t wrong about users. They were wrong about timing.

Secure mobile is slow when you’re early. Slow means no feedback. No feedback means you build the wrong thing with confidence.

So we shipped a browser extension first.

Not because it was perfect. Because it was fast.

That choice bought us months of learning before we touched mobile at scale.

Causality: speed gave us feedback; feedback reduced risk.

⸻

The mistake that taught us the expensive lesson

We hired designers with zero crypto experience for “fresh eyes.”

Fresh eyes turned into blank stares. They spent months learning jargon and constraints. Then they rebuilt the same old wallet patterns we wanted to avoid.

Causality: no domain fluency meant slow decisions; slow decisions meant copied defaults.

Lesson: you can’t outsource understanding.

⸻

Purity vs product

Self-custody purists say: “No backend.” We agreed.

Core wallet functions had no backend dependency.

Then we added a backend anyway. Not for keys. Not for signing. Not for custody.

For transaction history. For portfolio indexing. For a UI that didn’t feel like reading a CSV.

We kept the principle. We dropped the dogma.

⸻

The moment downloads stopped mattering

We launched mobile in September 2023. Downloads trickled.

Then we ran a Coinbase Learn & Earn campaign. Trickle became flood. We celebrated.

Then we looked closer.

Most people downloaded, claimed tokens, and left.

A wallet that only holds tokens is a digital shoebox. You open it when you have to. Not because you want to.

Contrast: “growth” wasn’t growth. It was a one-time bribe.

⸻

The fix: build a reason to return

That became VeBetter.

We put an ecosystem inside the wallet: apps, utilities, ways to earn, ways to participate, ways to do something useful.

Daily actives climbed. The token got attention. More users joined because the loop existed.

We didn’t build “a wallet.” We built a habit.

⸻

What VeWorld is now (compressed)

Three pillars: 1. Core wallet 2. VeBetter ecosystem 3. Crypto card payments

Plus a developer toolkit so other builders can plug in.

No grand master plan. Just a series of decisions where the goal stayed simple: ship, learn, tighten, repeat.

And somewhere in the middle of that… I designed a logo.

Btw, it looks like below. It's not symmetrical and that still annoys me.

Ahh well, i would take our current userbase over that slight inconsistency everyday.