Financial & Enterprise
Stips
Social prediction markets, made playable
By Hiram BarskyFounder & Principal Designer
Role
Product Design · Full-stack · AI
Timeframe
2025
Published
August 2026
Outcome
Live in beta on play money
Built with
Lovable, Supabase · Figma Design · Claude Code · Netlify
The result
Live in beta at stips.bet: prediction markets rebuilt as a card game you read at a glance — plain question, YES/NO, live payout — with the order book nowhere in sight. Proof the barrier was never the concept, only the interface.
Overview
Prediction markets are one of the internet’s best ideas trapped in one of its worst interfaces. Stips strips away the trading terminal and rebuilds the experience as a game with friends — social, legible, and fun to reason about.
The problem
The mechanics that make prediction markets powerful — order books, implied probabilities, spreads — are exactly what scares casual users away. The product’s core audience bounces off its own front door. That’s not a marketing problem; it’s a design problem.
Research
The people prediction markets are best for are exactly the people the interfaces scare off.
Interface intimidation
Order books, implied probabilities, and spreads read as ‘this is not for you’ to anyone who isn’t a trader.
→ Drove: A card-based market UI that hides the machinery — you understand your first market before anyone explains it.
Markets are social objects
Casual users don’t bet on questions — they bet on questions their friends are arguing about.
→ Drove: Social context on every market: who’s in, what the crowd thinks, how the odds have moved.
Real money blocks learning
Nobody learns a new game with rent on the table. Stakes turn curiosity into anxiety.
→ Drove: A play-money beta where the tuition is free.
The approach
- 1
Translated market mechanics into a card-based betting UI that reads at a glance — you understand your first market before anyone has to explain it.
- 2
Added the social layer that makes it a game: who’s in, what the crowd thinks, and how the odds moved since you last looked.
- 3
Shipped a play-money beta so newcomers learn by playing, not by risking — nobody learns a new game with real money on the table.
Our thought process
Prediction markets already work — as machines. The design job was making them legible as games: something you can read at a glance, argue about with friends, and learn without risk.
What didn’t work
The first pass kept a simplified order book, on the theory that transparency builds trust. It read as homework. Trust came from legibility, not disclosure — market cards that read like a group chat did what the slimmed-down trading terminal couldn’t.
The outcome
Live in beta on play money, with markets that read like a group chat — proof the barrier to prediction markets was never the concept, just the interface.
What this means for your project
Plenty of products hide real power behind an interface only experts enjoy — fintech, analytics, anything sold as advanced. We translate that machinery into something a newcomer understands on first contact. The depth stays; only the barrier goes.
“He takes charge of any situation and sees any task through to the end. I recommend Hiram for any project as the Lead UX Designer.”
