Issue ticket: https://github.com/livepeer/explorer/issues/695
This design brief translates the teardown findings into a practical “minimum competitive staking experience” for the Explorer. The goal is not to redesign the entire Explorer, but to define the smallest set of UX improvements that would make self-custody delegation feel clearer, safer, and more competitive with the staking experiences users see elsewhere.
Each section addresses one of the high-priority themes from the Gap Specification, presents the proposed direction, and includes a wireframe where one helps clarify the solution.
Wireframes are deliberately low-fidelity. They're meant to anchor conversation around direction, not to specify final layout, copy, or visual design.
Items listed as Medium or Low priority in the Gap Specification are referenced but not designed against here. They're flagged at the end for follow-on work.
Items in Gap Specification are referenced here via row number. For example if you see #27 it references the gap in row #27 of the table in that doc
Explorer treats delegation as a feature embedded inside a network data table rather than a flow in its own right. The Unified Priority List in the Gap Specification converges on four high-priority themes, each pulling together gaps from both teardown passes.
Trust and transparency at the point of action (gaps #16, #19, #23, #18, #22, #15). Users are asked to commit tokens without inline risk information, links to documentation or FAQ, explanation of fee and reward cut mechanics, or a review and confirmation step before signing. The unbonding period, in particular, isn't shown until after the user has already undelegated. Risk content exists elsewhere in the ecosystem but isn't surfaced where users actually commit.
Earning and monitoring visibility on the Home page (gaps #1, #12). New users don't see delegation as an earning opportunity from the home page, and returning users have no quick read on how their existing delegation is performing without navigating to My Account. Discovery and monitoring, the two ends of the journey, share the same root cause.
Decision support during orchestrator selection (gap #6). Beyond yield, there's no linked guidance on how to evaluate orchestrators or what makes a good choice. Existing documentation isn't surfaced from the selection page.
Delegation flow architecture (gap #17). Delegation, redelegation, and exit are accessed from different pages through different patterns. Promoting delegation to a first-class widget that follows the user across the product, rather than living inside the Orchestrators table, would address the fragmentation that drives most of the discoverability and post-action issues.
Competitors that perform well in the teardown, particularly Lido, The Graph, and Coinbase, address these patterns by surfacing earning prominently, front-loading trust content where the user acts, and treating the staking action as a first-class flow rather than a feature attached to a data view. The proposed directions in this brief apply those same patterns to Explorer.
Gaps addressed: #1, #12 (earning visibility on Home page); #25 (unauthenticated state)
The story: A user arriving at Explorer should immediately understand that delegation is an earning opportunity. Today, the Home page treats Explorer primarily as a data viewer, with no signal that the user can participate or that participation pays. Returning users with active delegations have no quick read on their position from the Home page either.