ThetaHerd

05 October 2026 · Design study 01

One herd.
Clearer choices.

A sequential record of the references, alternatives and decisions behind the first unified preview.

Try the pasture →Try the journey →Sample position →

Generated boards are proposals. The interactive preview uses native HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It does not connect a wallet or send transactions.

01 · The product boundary

Strategy first.
Collateral second.

The user chose Cow / Bull as the first decision. Cow can be fully funded or use Aave collateral. Bull currently offers only Aave collateral. The ghost identifies Aave, while borrowing remains a separate step after funding.

Keep the concepts separate. Cow is not a directional bet against the asset, and “buy” in Cow is not the Bull strategy. Sleep, daylight and moonlight do not enable, pause or close a position.

Scope: a new infrastructure home and a working design prototype in herd/. Cow and Cattle retain their files, deployments and live flows. No fully funded Bull is released by this study.

02 · Read and capture before redesigning

Carry the lessons forward.

Actual Theta AMM infrastructure home before this study
AMM · InfrastructureQuiet typography, protocol map, service documentation and independent frontend ownership.
Actual Cow sample holdings screen
Cow · Asset-first journeyKeep the chosen holding, explicit price/date, direct position access, and labelled sample mode.
Actual Cattle daylight landing with ghost mascot
Cattle · Character and lifecycleSage/lilac identity, optional borrowing, position identity before balances, and explicit fund/repay/roll steps.

These are live-page reference captures, not before-screens of Herd. Cow was in fictional sample mode; the two landings were disconnected. Captures: 1920 × 993 CSS px. Read the imagegen design guide, Cow’s journal and Cattle’s journal.

Do not inherit stale statements. Some historic boards describe older release gates or owner-paid fees. Current protocol behavior and the user’s later corrections take precedence.

03 · Three hypotheses, not three palettes

Explore, then choose.

A · Open pasture

Selected for the entrance
Generated concept A: two large Cow and Bull cards in a daylight pasture
Adopt: two equal starting choices, direct behavioral descriptions and different characters. Adapt: reduce the art and card height so phone users reach both choices sooner. Reject: “same markets,” “same tools,” and “a brighter tomorrow” are not established product claims. The generated menu has no role in the implementation.

B · Compact workspace

Adapt selector; reject explanatory copy
Generated concept B: moonlit workspace with a compact strategy selector; some text is rejected below
Adopt: a persistent Cow / Bull selector after entry and the sleeping/awake character idea. Reject: this image incorrectly claims users buy/sell options and collect option premiums directly. Its “steady” and “works in sideways or higher markets” wording is not used. It also duplicates theme controls and overwhelms the phone with multiple stages.

C · Collateral becomes visible

Selected for the collateral step
Generated concept C: comparing fully funded and Aave collateral, then identifying the Ghost Cow
Adopt: equal choices with explicit descriptions, a ghost after Aave selection, and borrowing shown after funding. Adapt: hide the unavailable fully funded Bull path; don't draw checkmarks before actions complete. Reject: “your assets work harder” is vague; ghost selection is not an in-place migration of a funded Cow.

Full prompts, inputs and built-in tool mode ↗

04 · A small coherent slice

Make the journey inspectable.

  1. Choose Cow or Bull. The same choice remains available in the builder.
  2. Choose assets. The sample marks wstETH / USDC on Base as Aave-capable. WETH / USDC demonstrates the unavailable path. This is a demonstration set, not a new live whitelist.
  3. Choose collateral. Cow offers two choices on the supported pair. Bull offers only Aave. No hidden borrowing is added.
  4. Set a price, amount and schedule. Keep Cow’s explicit price/date. Aave examples distinguish strategy notional from the collateral supplied later.
  5. Review → create → fund. The created sample initially has no supplied assets. Funding is its own action and creates no debt.
  6. Manage the position. Borrow and repay are inspectable sample actions. Roll and close open their proposed steps; they do not fabricate quotes, fees, health factors or contract execution.

Each action is native HTML/JavaScript. Theme preference is browser-local and tolerates blocked storage. No example is silently saved as a live position. Live wallet integration and unified portfolio reads are later work.

05 · Character collateral

A little life in the pasture.

Cow
Bull
Ghost Cow
Ghost Bull

Solid characters are awake by day and resting by night. Ghosts rest by day and wake at night. Change the theme above to inspect both rows. The solid Bull is the strategy’s entrance character, not an offered collateral product.

The built-in image tool generated an eight-state RGBA atlas, then a focused extraction/spacing repair. CSS selects the cells; controls and all meaningful text remain native. The art remains decorative. Some soft edge glow survives; visual quality is assessed in the actual page.

Final character atlas ↗ · First asset pass ↗ · Asset prompts ↗

06 · One brand, sensible destinations

Start with the selector.

DestinationRole in the proposal
herd.thetanuts.financeInfrastructure, service reads and the published design preview.
thetaherd.comThe proposed consumer home: one selector, app and portfolio.
cow.thetaherd.comOptional future entry with Cow already selected.
cattle.thetaherd.comOptional future entry into the Aave paths.
bull.thetaherd.comOptional future Bull entry. A fully funded Bull remains unreleased.

Only the infrastructure host is part of this preparation. The consumer domains are proposals. “thetahard.com” is treated as a spelling slip, not another domain to provision. Separate origins do not inherit a wallet connection or local cache automatically.

Implementation boundary: reuse the existing indexers through narrowly allowed reads. Add no second cron, database, signing endpoint or changes to Cow/Cattle. The first preview owns its presentation files and fonts.

07 · What the evidence establishes

Test the page,
not just the picture.

The automated checks cover routing boundaries, source failures, supported collateral transitions and invalid plans. The browser walkthrough separately verifies creation, funding, borrowing and repayment. Live browser checks cover desktop and narrow phone layouts, real button interactions, theme changes and console errors.

Current validation record ↗

Daylight entrance
Daylight entrance
1440 × 1000 · final native implementation
Moonlit entrance on phone
Moonlit entrance on phone
390 × 844 viewport · full-page capture
Moonlit entrance
Moonlit entrance
1440 × 1000 · sleeping solid characters
Cow becomes Ghost Cow
Cow becomes Ghost Cow
390 × 844 · Aave chosen, still no borrowing
Infrastructure home
Infrastructure home
1440 × 1000 · AMM styling, Herd content
Narrow infrastructure layout
Narrow infrastructure layout
320 × 760 · overflow corrected
Creation is not funding
Creation is not funding
390 × 844 · fully funded Cow path awaiting its funding step
Optional borrowing review
Optional borrowing review
390 × 844 viewport · full-page fictional position
Browser corrections: show the new step from its heading; remove neighbouring sprite fragments; enlarge availability labels; wrap the infrastructure actions at 320px. Check scroll width against client width, because mobile auto-scaling can hide overflow when comparing only with innerWidth.

This is not a measured newcomer comprehension study. The next useful user test: ask someone to choose a strategy, explain what the ghost changes, and find where borrowing begins—without coaching.