Mithril Analytics

Acre: Simplifying DeFi Lending and Borrowing with Clear Risk Management.

Acre dashboard showing market size, total supplied and borrowed amounts, with a list of active and popular pools including their supply, borrow volume, and interest rates. Surrounding collage art includes a Sphinx, leaves, and a “One Lane Road” sign.

Context

Acre, a pseudonym for confidentiality, is a sports betting platform that uses stablecoins. It previously provided these tokens to Venus, a DeFi lending protocol, to earn yield.

To reduce external dependencies and capture more value, Acre made the decision to build its own lending platform—and also give builders the tools to create their own permissionless lending pools.

Problem

DeFi lending can be very complex for users. Borrowing flows are often confusing, and liquidation risks are unclear. This is exemplified when Aave liquidated $170 million in user collateral during the May 2021 crash.

For DAOs and small builders, building lending pools from scratch is costly and hard. Ethereum deployments can cost over $500 just in gas fees.

Solutions

To address these challenges, I:

Simplified borrowing flows and clarified risks, with an intuitive interface that made actions and outcomes easier to understand.
Worked within existing infrastructure to design pool creation flows. This made it easier for builders to create their own lending pools.

Impact

Our UX work supported investor conversations through interactive prototypes and helped engineers plan implementation by mapping multiple edge cases. The work remained valuable even though the product paused pre-mainnet.

Role

Product Designer (Web App UX & User Flows)

Team

Hugbo Clement - Product Lead
Enebeli Oluchi - Product Manager & UX Researcher
Marvellous Aigbe - Product Designer (Mobile)

Helping Users Choose the Right Pool

Before users supplied or borrowed, they needed to know what they were getting into. Each pool came with its own rules, risks, and rewards. We designed the UI to help users quickly assess:

Who created the pool and whether it’s verified,
Key stats like total supply, borrow, APY, and APR,
Overall risk score , simplifying risk perception for newer users,
A deep-dive view showing full pool configuration, token settings, fees, and permissions.

Acre dashboard displaying banner CTA for earning rewards, global metrics (market size, supplied, borrowed), and a list of popular pools with APY/APR breakdowns.

Acre’s dashboard showing market overview, total supply/borrow stats, and a list of top-performing lending pools, making it easy to compare options.

A detailed market view showing variable APYs, liquidity stats, and toggle controls for using assets as collateral within the Acre pool.

Users can explore asset-level details within each pool, including APYs, available liquidity, and collateral status, before making decisions.

Acre’s pool information page displaying supply, borrow, and liquidity totals, plus risk factor and a breakdown of all configuration settings like price oracle and fee structure.

The pool info page surfaces deeper metrics: oracle configuration, fees, protocol settings, pool admin etc.

Extended view of a pool’s tokens in Acre, showing icons for all supported assets, a chart of the current interest curve, and a breakdown of parameters like collateral factor, reserve factor, and utilization.

The pool token section visualizes interest curves and the data for all supported assets in the pool.

Navigating Lending and Borrowing with Confidence

Acre's borrowing and lending flows were designed for clarity and guardrails. Once a user entered a pool:

The portfolio section summarized supplied assets, earnings, and accrued interest.
Color-coded health indicators warned of risky liquidation zones.
Rewards for supply and borrow actions were clearly broken down in a dedicated section.
Also, active pool positions were visible right from the dashboard.

Pool page displaying total supplied assets, projected earnings, accrued interest, and pool utilization with collateral toggle options, after supply action.

After supplying, users see a personalized portfolio view showing the amount supplied and projected earnings. Collateral status is toggled directly within the asset list.

Borrow token interface in Acre. A modal overlays the dashboard, allowing users to input borrow amounts, view APR and APY, and borrow limits

Borrow modal showing borrow amount, LTV, APR, and borrow limit information.

Pool page showing borrowing details including total borrowed, accrued interest, repayable amount, collateral value, and a health factor meter.

Pool page dashboard view after borrowing. The health factor gauge helps assess liquidation risk at a glance.

Acre rewards page showing supply and borrow rewards history, including earned ACRE amounts and pool details.

The rewards page lets users track what they earned, from which pool, and through what action.

Dashboard with active pool summary. Displays user’s supplied/borrowed balances, health factor, and pool utilization, followed by a table of other public pools and their metrics.

Users always know which pools they’re active in. Those show up first with metrics tailored to their actions.

Designing a Flexible Yet Secure Pool Creation Experience

We wanted pool creation to feel both approachable and responsible, giving creators flexibility without sacrificing user safety.

Guided creation flow walks users through naming, risk settings, access control, and reward setup, all in one view.
A pre-launch checklist reinforces irreversible decisions like token selection and visibility, prompting users to double-check critical settings.
Token addition flow includes clear steps to define oracles, reserve factors, and interest rate models.
We also encouraged creators to verify themselves, improving transparency and earning user trust, especially in a permissionless environment.

Acre’s confirmation modal shown before pool creation. Lists key settings that become permanent—like supported tokens, LTV rules, and access control—once a pool is deployed.

Pre-creation modal prompting users to read documentation before pool creation.

Acre’s create-a-pool screen. Users input pool name, configure risk factors, set access (public, invite, or token-gated), and define optional reward tokens and caps.

Create Pool page with editable fields for name, risk, access, and incentives

Post-creation configuration screen showing pool information, a banner for creators to verify identity, and a button to add assets to pool, with a max of 20 tokens.

Post-creation config screen prompting creator to add assets and verify pool.

Add token modal in Acre with a dropdown to select a token (e.g. Tether), an input for contract address, and a note showing the asset uses the default price oracle.

1st step is to add a token to the pool. Users can choose or add a token manually and also select a price oracle.

Two-step UI in Acre’s token setup flow. Left screen shows adjustable settings like reserve factor, close factor, and interest rate model. Right screen confirms all selected parameters before adding the token.

Token configuration flow for adding an asset to a pool, showing interest rate model, fees, and close factor.

Acre’s pool configuration page showing admin address, oracle settings, reward token, pool cap, and asset-specific parameters like LTV, reserve factor, and interest rate model for Ethereum.

Pool configuration page showing added tokens, caps, and liquidation thresholds, with the option to make edits where available.

Conclusion

From exploring pools to managing risk to creating new lending markets, Acre was built to give users choice without confusion. Every edge case, every screen, was an attempt to make DeFi lending safer, more transparent, and genuinely permissionless.