How to do competitive analysis

‘Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio’ – Nicolas Taleb, Skin in the Game

Using real money is scary

That’s why you learn quicker

This is not financial advice - It’s UX advice 🧐

You are not the user

So become the user…

Would you like to play a game?

Every time you do competitive analysis, you need to sacrifice some money and go use some protocols.

Create a separate wallet just for this, and top it up with a few hundred dollars.

This might seem like overkill, but you want to use enough money that you become interested in the results - happy when you win, frustrated when you lose.

Never forget that this is just a game. Feel those emotions and learn from the experience.

Go to https://defillama.com/

Find a relevant category

Open 3 or 4 websites in new tabs

Get tokens

Use these tokens on each site

Screenshot every screen

Dump your screenshots in Figma and write up your notes

Come back after a week or so.

You will probably have some dramatic realisations through actually using the apps, over just looking at them. And if you do 3 or 4 back to back, you will likely notice certain commonalities and certain differences. Pay attention to how smooth each flow felt. It’s worth doing the weekly check-in to see if you’ve made any money or not. This might impact your “user experience” more than anything else you noticed. This too is an important realisation.

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Tip: When you get a chance, work through this guide to DeFi at your own pace.