Breaking! Elon Musk secretly recruits the Web3 "God of Design" late at night, is X planning to implement crypto payments? The foundation of Aave and Base's apps has been pulled out!

Damn, brothers, I was just scrolling through Twitter and almost dropped my phone.

Do you know that design genius who made the Aave App and Base App barely usable? Yeah, that Benji Taylor, was poached by Elon Musk! He announced it himself in a tweet early on March 26th, saying he’s going to be the head of design at X (formerly Twitter). One tweet, nearly 15 million views—can you imagine the heat? That’s not just a normal personnel change; it’s an earthquake!

You might think, it’s just a designer, right? There are plenty of project teams in crypto that go bankrupt or disappear every day. What’s so special about this one?

You’re naive.

This guy is only 26, a post-2000s kid! When he was 16, we were still stressing over exams, and he was already being interviewed by the UK’s top fashion magazine Dazed, with a business card that said “Creative Director.” Big-name artists like Ram Riddlz and A$AP Ant have worked with him. Even more crazy, at 16, he had his own design company, developed apps, and even designed a deck of playing cards. In an interview, he said he’s “not good at art,” just full of ideas, and he made everything happen. He also complained that school taught everything in a boring, uniform way, which made him want to vomit. Listen to that—16 years old, that awareness, that drive, no wonder he’s so awesome.

Later, he moved to the US and started a company called Los Feliz Engineering. At the end of 2020, he dropped a bomb product—Honk.

This thing was incredible.

In chat, there’s no send button—you type every word, and the other person sees you editing in real-time, just like face-to-face chatting. Plus, chat records aren’t stored; once you leave the room, it’s all gone. Want to call someone? Just send “Honk,” and their phone will ring like crazy. It’s like bringing the soul of offline chatting online. It blew up on TikTok, with videos getting hundreds of thousands of likes. At its peak, its engagement outperformed Instagram. The data was crazy—before shutting down, they accumulated 2.6 billion characters of input and 170 million “Honk” calls.

But why did it die?

The problem was in that “extremity.” It required both parties to be online at the same time, no group chats, no Android version. Too niche, brothers. Great product, but too small a market. Like building the most powerful mining rig in the world, but only able to use super-expensive, specialized electricity—how many miners can afford that?

Later, they launched a self-custody wallet called Family. Industry insiders said it was the “best user experience crypto wallet,” and its design language was later borrowed by many wallets. But have you heard of it? Probably not. Great product, but poor marketing.

Then, probably tired and realizing they couldn’t compete with platforms alone, in 2023, their entire team was acquired by Aave Labs. Honk was shut down, but the Family wallet remained. And then? In February this year, Aave also cut the Family wallet, saying they wanted to focus on DeFi and that general-purpose wallets had no future. Suji, founder of Mask Network, even tweeted today reminiscing that the Family wallet was a design peak and the “foundation” of later Aave apps.

Last October, this guy moved from Aave to become the design lead at Base. Now, if you’re using the Aave and Base mobile apps, which seem okay, they all have his influence. Some investors have told me that the experience of Web3 mobile apps is terrible—nine out of ten are trash. Infrastructure is one issue, but the bigger problem is the lack of good designers who can make this mess look better and more user-friendly. Benji Taylor is that guy who can turn this crap into something beautiful—even if in Web2, it might just be barely passing.

Now, he’s been targeted by Musk.

The fact that someone as picky as Musk personally tweeted to welcome him—that’s a huge deal, no need for me to say more.

The internet is already buzzing with speculation. Some say, with the product lead he brought from Solana Labs, both with crypto backgrounds, Musk is planning to add more crypto features to X. Others say his experience with social apps and crypto wallets is perfect for refining X’s encrypted messaging X Chat and payment features.

What do I think?

I think his previous products, like Honk and Family, were too “idealistic”—good, but not popular. Now he’s at Musk’s companies—X, xAI, SpaceX—each a traffic monster and resource black hole. His genius ideas might finally get the stage they deserve, amplified ten thousand times.

And here’s a harsh truth.

AI art is impressive, but the top-tier aesthetic—those goosebumps you get at first sight—is something AI can’t learn. That’s a gift from heaven. Now, that gift has been acquired by the world’s richest man.

It’s late, and I stare at this tweet, with only one thought in my mind: the biggest gap in Web3 isn’t just users, but people who can connect “genius design” with “mass-market products.” Every time one leaves, the scene loses a vital link.

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