Year
Tech Stack
Description
Adrena is a Solana trading app for spot and perpetual markets. I joined through an internship format, but the work felt like real product work quickly: I had daily reports to share with other developers, code reviews to pass and screens that actual traders would use.
Most of my time went into the user-facing product: trading UI, chart work, token selector, staking leaderboard, ALP page, Jupiter swap integration and the first anniversary campaign.
My Role
I worked mainly on frontend UX and shipped roughly 30 merged PRs, ranging from chores to full page reworks.
I also touched the API layer when a screen needed cleaner data or a better shape, and I kept those changes small because the product was already live.
Case Study
Summary
My DeFi internship inside Adrena, a Solana trading product where I shipped around 30 merged PRs across trading screens, staking pages, campaign UI, swaps and smaller API work.
Context
This was my first experience inside a DeFi product team where the interface has to make money-related actions feel clear without hiding the risk behind a pretty screen.
The product mixes trading, staking, swaps, leaderboard mechanics and campaign pages, so the frontend had to stay coherent across very different flows.
Problem
The hardest part for me was the visible part: Tailwind details, mobile views, responsive states and tiny flickers that make a trading interface feel unfinished.
I care a lot about this kind of polish. A chart that jumps, a token selector that feels cramped on mobile or a staking card that shifts during load can make the whole product feel less serious than the engineering behind it.
Contributions
Worked on the trading interface, including chart-related UI and the token selector.
Reworked product pages around staking, the leaderboard and ALP.
Integrated Jupiter swap flows into the product experience.
Built UI for Adrena’s first anniversary campaign and handled smaller chores around the repo.
Adjusted API-facing pieces when a screen needed cleaner data to behave properly.
Technical Decisions
I treated mobile as a real target, not a smaller desktop. The work often came down to spacing, ordering, loading states and removing the little jumps that users notice before they can explain them.
I kept reporting clearly to the team because the internship had a structured rhythm, but I was still trusted by the rest of the team with product screens that mattered.
Result
Around 30 of my PRs were merged during the internship.
I learned that this is the kind of team setup where I do my best work: enough trust to own details, enough review to raise the level, and a product where frontend choices directly affect user confidence.