A blank slate, and a bootstrapped one
I stepped into a blank slate: no PMs, no engineers, no designers. Just auditors, a small sales team, and a shared goal of making Web3 safer. QuillAudits was bootstrapped, so every decision had to pay back fast and be executed lean.
My job was to set the product strategy, form a team, and ship from zero. We agreed on four goals for the first product:
Safer Web3
Build products that stop everyday users losing money.
Brand recall
Make QuillAudits a name users know, not just founders.
Trust deficit
Rebuild trust in Web3 after a year of collapses.
Audit inbound
Bring new projects into the audit business pipeline.
Choosing the problem
I started by mapping where users actually lose money in Web3. Two vectors emerged: protocol-level hacks (smart-contract vulnerabilities) and attacks on individuals (their wallets and their decisions). Audits already covered the first, so we focused the first product on individuals, where the brand impact would be visible and immediate.
I scored four individual-level threats against seven weighted criteria: making Web3 safer, improving its image, brand presence, feeding the audit pipeline, ease of build, low demand on the auditors’ time, and fit with DeFi users.
Highest user pain, strong brand impact, little dependence on auditors
Strong safety and brand potential, weaker tie to audits
Valuable, but harder to execute and less viral
Low return at this early stage of the company
Rug-pull detection scored highest, with phishing protection close behind. Because the gap was small, leadership and I also weighed something the seven criteria didn’t capture, partnership potential, and it pointed the same way.
Four kinds of user, one tool
To learn how people judge whether a token is safe, I ran 50+ interviews across four segments, each with its own script, in the places each group already spends time.
| Degens | DeFi users | Newcomers | Project creators | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Found in | Paid Telegram groups | Crypto events in Bengaluru | r/CryptoCurrency and post-rug threads | QuillAudits’ audit clients |
| Problem | Ape in on hype and get rugged most | Cross-check Etherscan, TokenSniffer and CoinGecko by hand | Follow influencers; don’t know what an LP lock is | Flagged unfairly, and copied by scammers |
| Need | Quick, clear risk flags | One tool, with few false positives | Plain English and visual risk cues | Proof of legitimacy they can share |
| We built | The honeypot detector and one headline score | Every check behind the score, plus holder and LP charts | Plain-English explanations and a simpler result page | Score redemption and a trust badge, left on the roadmap |
A few of the interview questions
- “Can you walk me through the last time you bought a new token?”
- “What makes you think a token might be a scam?”
- “How much time would you spend checking a token?”
- “Bot, web app or browser extension?”
- For project teams: “Would you pay for a credibility badge?”
From noise to signal before writing a spec
Before committing a team, I ran four cheap tests to make sure we were solving a real problem.
- 1
Problem sensing
Hung out on Dexscreener and in the Telegram groups of new tokens. Buyers were consistently anxious about rugs.
- 2
Competitive benchmarking
One competitor was already selling token-safety data through an API: proof that the data had commercial demand.
- 3
Rapid prototype
Forked an open-source repo covering 10% of the vision. Shared in degen Telegram groups, it drew a trickle of real users.
- 4
Community feedback
Hosted a live event with Web3 builders and users to test the idea. The verdict: this is needed now.
Scoping the beta
With a lean team of a developer, a designer and a research intern, I chose to build a focused beta: enough to test product-market fit and build team momentum. I wrote the PRD and prioritised with MoSCoW, drawing on the interviews, feasibility input from the auditors, and feedback on the prototype.
- Dynamic scoringA transparent score that evolves as a token matures
- Honeypot detectorA simulated buy and sell that catches tokens you can’t sell
- Smart-contract flagsRisky ERC-20 permissions, defined with the audit team
- Market risk signalsLP lock, renounced ownership and wallet concentration: the top requests
- Ethereum + BSCWhere 90%+ of new coins launched in early 2023
- Plain-English explanationsOnboard beginners and non-technical Web3 users
- Score disputesSo legitimate projects could flag an unfair score
- Shareable linksTrust loops across X, Telegram and Discord
- APIs, bots, wallet connectHooks into the wider ecosystem for distribution
- Extension and reportsPassive, portable checks that travel with the user
- Rug-pull databaseEstablishes the product as an authority
- NFTs and non-ERC-20sNot core to meme-coin safety
- Open disputesToo noisy; verified project requests only
- Rug front-runningToo hard to validate reliably this early
Phase 1: launch to real users
- monthly active users
- 2,000+
- tokens scanned
- 10,000+
- bounce rate
- <35%
We launched the beta with a lean go-to-market that leaned on QuillAudits’ existing reach: teasers on the brand’s X and LinkedIn, a waitlist on the prototype, hand-written DMs to DeFi creators and meme-coin watchers, a token-checker bot in our Discord, live demos at events, Reddit threads about scams, X AMAs on token safety, and the monthly newsletter. We wanted to learn two things: can users read our risk signals, and will they come back for the next token?
The honeypot detector was a breakout hit
Degens loved it. The dynamic score, which stayed strict on risky behaviour, landed too. The checks summary helped people understand each flag, and the clean UI stood out against the main competitor.
The Discord bot was the wrong channel
Degens live on Telegram, so the bot got no adoption. Score variability confused newcomers, and project creators only wanted to share their score when it was good.
And people did come back: 1 in 3 users used QuillCheck every week, and 1 in 5 came back several times a day.
Phase 2: a product people trust and come back to
- monthly active users
- 3–4K
- tokens scanned a month
- 15,000+
- average session
- 56s → 2 min+
- Net Promoter Score
- 76 → 83
Phase 2 had one focus: turning QuillCheck into something users would trust, recommend and rely on. Each release answered something Phase 1 taught us. In December 2023 we launched v1 publicly at ETHIndia in Bengaluru.
| What we shipped | Why |
|---|---|
| A redesign of the result page, with a demo video | Lower the mental load, especially for newcomers |
| Score transparency: the checks behind each score, with the possible minimum and maximum | Explain why scores vary, so they feel fair |
| Pre-emptive indexing of new tokens from chain events, such as new Uniswap pools | Insights the moment a token launches, with no wait |
| Polygon support | QuillAudits’ strategic partner focus |
| Top-holder charts, liquidity-pool summaries and a last-updated flag | Help power users judge risk at a glance |
| Faster pages for search engines | Compound the organic traffic that had started |
Phase 3: distribution, integrations and new chains
- monthly users, counting GeckoTerminal and the API
- 100K+
- tokens scanned a month
- 250K+
- average session
- 2 → 2.5 min
- traffic from Base and Solana
- 90%+
With a stable product and strong feedback, we moved from refinement to distribution. SEO gave us a tailwind; integrations, the API and bets on new networks did the rest. The market helped too: the 2024 meme-coin wave on Base and Solana lifted every token tool. Our part was shipping both chains as trading moved there, so the wave reached us.
GeckoTerminal
Pursued integrations in person at crypto events. GeckoTerminal signed in 2024 and embedded QuillCheck. MAU doubled within a month.
A public API
Opened to indie developers and bots. 50+ Telegram bots, tools and dashboards integrated it, bringing passive, long-tail usage.
Base and Solana
We launched on both in 2024 as meme trading moved there. By year-end they drove 90%+ of traffic.
An SEO engine
Indexed token pages, targeted keywords chosen from Search Console and competitor gaps, plus PR and backlinks. Steady organic growth.
Dynamic share cards
Every token got a shareable preview with its score, posted into busy meme-coin threads on X: a native traffic loop.
Rug-pull dashboards
Dashboards tracking rug pulls across chains and exchanges, plus listings on Alchemy, DappList and other dapp directories.
We also moved early into Telegram mini apps, which met degens where they already were and grew usage without anyone having to visit the site.
How the four goals landed
Back to the four goals we set at the start, and what QuillCheck did for each.
| Goal | Result |
|---|---|
| Safer Web3 | 490K+ honeypot tokens detected and 2.1M+ tokens scanned |
| Brand recall | Built into GeckoTerminal, used by 50+ bots and tools through the public API, and listed on Alchemy and DappList |
| Trust deficit | Net Promoter Score rose from 76 to 83, and 1 in 3 users came back every week |
| Audit inbound | Helped QuillAudits join Polygon’s Solution Provider Network in July 2024, with QuillCheck’s token checks part of the offer, and win work in Polygon’s ecosystem. Polygon projects QuillAudits audited in 2023–24 include Buk Protocol, Zoth, AirLyft and Soulverse. |
What I’d do differently
Looking back, these are the calls I’d make earlier.
Outgrow the label sooner
We stayed the “rug-pull checker” too long, and missed the chance to define ourselves as Web3’s token-safety layer.
Telegram from day one
The Discord bot flopped because our users were on Telegram all along. We should have built there first.
An appeal flow, earlier
Project creators felt unheard. A way to redeem a score should have shipped well before it was planned.
A tribe of rug hunters
We never let users contribute to or compete on detection, and left a growth loop on the table.
Our own channels
We leaned on QuillAudits’ channels. When the company split into QuillAI Network, product marketing momentum dropped with it.
Keep shipping
As the team moved to new products, QuillCheck went two quarters without a major release, and growth stopped compounding.
What I left for the next phase
I stepped away in December 2024. Before I did, I laid out the roadmap for monetisation and deeper trust infrastructure:
- Pro mode: advanced market analysis, token watchlists, PDF exports and alerts.
- Score redemption for project creators: steps to improve a score, including an audit.
- An embeddable trust badge: projects show a verifiable score on their own site or dapp.
- Influencer partnerships: rewarding influencers for running a QuillCheck before they promote a new token.