A sequel to “The future of crypto doesn’t have to look like this.”
Crypto has a visual problem.
For an industry rooted in ideas like freedom and community, it looks — overwhelmingly — like a tech demo. Dark UIs. Neon grids. Terminal fonts. Interfaces that feel more like surveillance than empowerment.
It’s a design language built to signal credibility, but one that now feels cold, closed, and disconnected from people.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Crypto could take a lesson from another emerging space: AI.
The Visualising AI project reframed how we perceive intelligence — not with code or charts, but with light, stories, and softness.
For non-members, you can read the full story here.
Source: Motiongrapher.
Crypto needs its own version of that. Because we don’t just need to explain the protocols . We need to show people a future they want to be part of.
What crypto looks like now
Top 10 CEXs homepages
Scroll through most crypto landing pages and you’ll see the same pattern: dark backgrounds, neon accents, grid-heavy UI. It all feels engineered — and not necessarily for people.
What was once a bold visual identity now feels overused. Crypto brands lean into sci-fi aesthetics that signal power, but not much else. There’s little warmth. Little invitation.
This is a space that says it’s for everyone, but visually, it feels like it’s talking to itself.
What ‘Visualising AI’ got right
When the AI world started confronting its own public perception problem — fears of sentience, control, and surveillance — Visualising AI responded not with marketing spin, but with emotional clarity.
It imagined AI not as a threat, but as a tool. Not as a glowing brain or a wall of data, but as light, intuition, possibility. The visuals were warm, metaphorical, and above all: human.
That shift mattered. It turned fear into conversation. It gave people a way in.
What if crypto looked more human?
This section isn’t just a narrative. It’s a visual exploration. Each concept is paired with Generative AI visuals designed to challenge the dominant aesthetic in crypto. Some are literal, others abstract — but all are here to spark new ways of seeing.
The future isn’t just something we code. It’s something we design.
We can reimagine crypto’s building blocks not as code, but as characters.
Not as interfaces, but stories.
Let’s start here:
Wallets ≠ vaults. They could be selves.
Visualise a glowing mosaic of memory shards — NFTs, credentials, artefacts — floating around a person like constellations.
Or a floating pouch that opens to reveal glowing threads connected to moments: concerts, trades, DAOs, contributions.
Blockchains ≠ ledgers. They could be networks that breathe.
A mycelial root system glowing gently underground.
A neural field pulsing with light as people interact.
Not gridlines. Life lines.
DAOs ≠ dashboards. They could be organisms.
A garden that reshapes as people vote.
A generative creature that grows new limbs with each proposal.
Shared stewardship made visual.
Smart contracts ≠ code blocks. They could be rituals.
Threads of light weaving between hands.
A shared glyph drawn mid-air when an agreement is made.
A ceremony where contracts glow brighter as they’re honoured.
What I’m really really saying
This isn’t just about style. It’s about accessibility. Emotion.
Crypto and Web3 says it wants to be mainstream, to be cultural, to matter beyond speculation. But culture doesn’t move through specs. It moves through feeling.
We need visuals that reflect:
Transparency not as glass, but as light.Decentralisation not as chaos, but as dance.Trust not as terminals, but as bridges, rituals, and hands.Ownership not as isolation, but as collectives, families, stories.
The ask
If you’re a designer, builder, founder — you have a role to play in this.
Let’s build interfaces that feel less like sci-fi command lines and more like human invitations.
Let’s stop imagining crypto as a black box and start showing it as a window. Or better yet, a lantern.
Because if crypto and Web3 is going to be the foundation of the next internet,
it should look like something worth connecting to.
The first story is published here.
And, I’ve explored this idea further in a fictional brand case study on Behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/226192207/ZENO-A-crypto-brand-built-for-clarity
Crypto doesn’t have to look like this (either) was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.