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I’m Sasha Tanase Luca, and I build web3 products, mostly around Ethereum and Bitcoin, where research and discovery guide every decision. I love digging into what users actually need, and turning that into product decisions that make sense for them and the business. To me, a successful product is one that balances customer needs with business goals, and proves its worth through real adoption. I’m at my best when I’m helping teams figure out what really matters, cutting through the noise, and aligning everyone around evidence so we can ship something people actually use.
For over 7 years I've been shaping roadmaps, validating Product-Market Fit, and building products that people love, while navigating the messiness of decentralized systems.
Alongside my product work, I’m an active public speaker at major web3 conferences such as Devcon and EthCC. My favorite topics focus on practical perspectives on product development, user research, UX, trust, and developer experience in decentralized systems.
Product Discovery, PMF Validation, PMF Validation, Jobs-to-be-Done Analysis, User Segmentation, Data-informed Decision Making, Roadmap Prioritization, Analytics & On-chain Metrics, Cross-functional Team Leadership, Stakeholder Alignment
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Led PMF-focused research for Mezo Network across discovery, segmentation, and value proposition validation. The research identified the exact user segment that consistently responded to Mezo Borrow, while invalidating several lower-fit segments. This sharpened product focus and helped concentrate efforts on the top 35–40% of users most likely to adopt and retain.
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Worked in close partnership with the Product Managers responsible for Mezo Borrow and Mezo Onboarding, translating research findings into concrete roadmap decisions. These insights directly influenced prioritization and helped elevate Mezo Borrow as the flagship product of the Mezo Network, driving the majority of early product engagement within two quarters.
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Coordinated cross-functional teams across Product, Design, Engineering, and Marketing, and built a centralized insight repository used across the company. The repository became the single source of truth for research, supporting 15+ stakeholders. The repository streamlined access to research, reduced duplicated efforts, and improved cross-team decision-making. Repository can be seen here
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Guided product teams with actionable insights that shaped roadmap sequencing and scope. Research inputs informed roadmap decisions related to onboarding, borrowing flows, and user education, shortening validation cycles and reducing misaligned initiatives.
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Ran Jobs-to-be-Done interviews, PMF surveys, and iterative discovery combining qualitative and quantitative signals. The outputs aligned Product and Marketing around a shared definition of the target user and enabled clearer messaging, contributing to a 20% uplift in qualified traffic and early-stage conversion for Mezo Borrow.
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Led post-merger discovery and stakeholder alignment following the Keep and NuCypher merge. Ran workshops and interviews to define shared product direction and brand identity, resulting in Brand Personality Guidelines, Target User Profiles, and validated product hypotheses. This work helped minimize roadmap rework and improved strategic alignment across teams.
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Conducted deep research into Threshold’s core target audience: Bitcoin holders already exposed to DeFi. Validated assumptions around risk tolerance, yield expectations, and trust barriers, narrowing focus to higher-fit user segments. Insights guided product strategy, boosting early adoption of staking and bridging features and driving growth in Total Value Locked (TVL) across these flows.
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Owned the end-to-end strategy and delivery of the Threshold marketing website. Defined the information architecture and a segmented funnel tailored to different user profiles, led user flows, wireframes, and three rounds of usability testing, resulting in a 30% improvement in first-time task success and a 22% lift in product engagement from website entry points.
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Led end-to-end product discovery and delivery for the Threshold Network Dashboard, covering onboarding, legacy stake migration, new staker flows, and Node Operator experiences. Ran extensive research with stakers, node operators, service providers, and BTC-focused DeFi users. Research-driven iterations improved onboarding completion by approximately 20% and reduced time-to-first-stake by around 16%.
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Owned discovery, definition, and iteration of tBTC bridge v2. Ran exploratory research, validated product hypotheses, and collaborated closely with smart contract developers to align UX with protocol constraints. Delivered two validated iterations that improved successful bridge completion rates by approximately 18% and increased user confidence in the bridging process.
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Proposed and validated a third major iteration of the tBTC bridge based on user insights, introducing a dual-experience model with a fast consumer bridge and a slower, yield-bearing LP bridge. While not shipped, the proposal influenced internal strategy discussions around liquidity provisioning, scalability, and perceived PMF.
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Improved the tBTC Node Operator experience by redesigning client-code UX and documentation. Created a custom research methodology of which I am very proud, by combining diary studies and interviews to evaluate real-world setup and maintenance workflows, reducing setup-related issues by approximately 30% and improving operator-reported clarity. Study here
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Partnered with the CEO on a service blueprint initiative to optimize internal workflows across product, engineering, research, and operations. This work clarified ownership, reduced cross-team friction, and improved delivery speed by an estimated 15–20%.
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Ran deep discovery on Node Operator behavior and uncovered a new high-value segment: Staking Providers (B2B). This led to better documentation, clearer node-setup guides, and tighter communication on client-code updates reducing friction across the entire setup and node maintenance journey. These changes drove a 15% increase in active Node Operators and cut setup drop-offs by 30%. This was achieved through multiple validation cycles.
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Led discovery and validation for Coverage Pools, shaping the feature set and PMF strategy. User interviews revealed that many token holders wanted a lower-risk, passive-income option with less slashing. Acting on this insight, we designed a feature that tapped into idle tokens, ultimately locking 33% of the total supply and driving stronger engagement with network security.
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Led the end-to-end creation of Coverage Pools (before AAVE), the first feature of its kind in Ethereum DeFi at the time. Because the concept was completely new, I focused on transparency, clear guidance, and a simple 3-step mental model to help users understand how it worked. I ran deep discovery interviews and usability tests centered on learnability and recall. By the end of testing, 87% of participants accurately remembered the full 3-step flow, confirming strong comprehension of a complex new feature.
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Partnered with Product Marketing to shape GTM strategy and update the website and in-app messaging for new feature launches. These changes improved clarity, strengthened trust signals, and drove a 22% lift in early-stage adoption within the first quarter from the Coverage Pool feature launch.
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Improved the UX for SelfKey wallet targeting issues specific to blockchain - improved the onboarding and wallet recovery experience by adding the option of Seed Phrase and Private Key login
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Improved and helped user growth by turning the existent SelfKey Marketplace which was designed as a dependent wallet feature to an independent dApp that anyone can access.
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Worked closely with the R&D team and designed an in wallet staking feature as an extension of a governance token.
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Responsible for conducting User Research Interviews, in a quest of digging deeper both in the explorative phase and also in the generative phase, using both Qualitative and Quantitative methods.
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Organized Workshops in the early stages of Product Discovery and carried out different activites to help the Product Team to shape up future features and products.
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Worked on products like SelfKey Digital Identity Wallet, Selfkey Staking, SelfKey Marketplace, KeyFi DeFi Aggregator.
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Created a coherent and seamless experience for the main website's visitors, while giving a clear and simple journey to the potential clients of our company's tools.
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Designed the experience, architecture, and interaction for several of the company's tool flows and digital services.
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Responsible for user experience and user interface of the products from the incipient phase to the ready for launching phase.
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Responsible for conducting User Research Interviews, in a quest of digging deeper both in the explorative phase and also in the generative phase, using both Qualitative and Quantitative methods.
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Organized UX Workshops to align stakeholders and define problems to solve. Carried out UX activities to involve and engage a large number of players.
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Created wireframes, flowcharts, and lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes.
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Delivered high fidelity screens and specifications to the developers.
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Worked on products like Alethio Block Explorer, Alethio API, Alethio Monitoring (two versions), Alethio Design System and other functionalities of the Ethereum Data Analytics Platform.
- Designing for Trust in Web3: Lessons from the User Research Field - EthCC[7] Cannes, 2025
- Elevating Developer Experience (DX) in web3 - a framework - EthCC[6], Paris, 2023 - collaboration with Daniel Luca
- The Future of Web3UX - a Paradigm Shift for a Better Collaboration between Design and Development DevCon VI Bogota, 2022
- Accessibility: Ethereum for LITERALLY everyone! - EthCC[4]Paris, 2022
- That never even crossed my mind! How to spot & fix your cognitive biases - EthCC[3] 2020, Paris
- User Research: How to Get Out of Our Bubbles by Talking to Users - DevCon V Osaka, 2019 - collaboration with Georgia Rakusen
Master Degree of Architecture (M.Arch) - Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, 2005-2011