Red Numbers Are Signals, Not Failures

Most crypto projects are afraid of red numbers.

They design dashboards that only ever show the green: APYs rounded up, charts smoothed out, volatility hidden. If something looks negative—lower yield, a dip in liquidity—they bury it under disclaimers or quietly remove the data altogether.

It feels safer. Who would deposit millions into a protocol showing losses?

But this fear is exactly backwards. Hiding red numbers doesn’t build trust. It erodes it.

The Bank Illusion

If you’ve ever checked a traditional bank account, you’ll notice it’s always clean. No scary volatility, no liquidity ratios, no bad weeks. The interface tells you: Don’t worry, your money is safe.

But that neat balance hides the truth. Behind the scenes, your deposits are tied up in mortgages, derivatives, and loan portfolios that can go south at any moment. The interface pretends stability by abstracting away volatility.

Crypto protocols that hide red numbers are copying banks—ironically, the very institutions they claim to disrupt.

The Value of Seeing Red

When I was designing at Plume, this fear of red numbers came up constantly. Team members worried that if users saw a 1% APY, or a week of negative returns, they’d leave.

What we found instead was the opposite: when we made volatility visible, people trusted the system more.

Why? Because red numbers are not failures. They’re signals.

A dip in APY signals that assets are real, that they move with markets. A delay in redemptions signals operational mechanics—maybe assets are being liquidated, maybe liquidity buffers are thin. These aren’t bugs, they’re the truth. And truth, even if inconvenient, builds more credibility than polished lies.

Credibility Comes From Contrast

Imagine two dashboards. One shows only upward-trending lines, perfect green numbers. The other shows mostly positive performance but occasionally dips into red.

Which feels more believable?

The second one. Because life isn’t perfectly smooth. Markets aren’t frictionless. Anyone who’s put serious money to work knows that. They expect noise. They expect drawdowns. Seeing those reflected in your product tells them the system is honest, not airbrushed.

The paradox is that acknowledging imperfection makes you look stronger.

Signals vs. Failures

Of course, not all red numbers are good. Sometimes they are failures—like a smart contract exploit or a liquidity pool permanently drained. But most red numbers are not existential.

They’re signals:

• Lower yield this week? Assets underperformed. Normal.

• Liquidity buffer dipped? Redemptions spiked. Normal.

• NAV declined? Market moved. Normal.

The product design challenge is to frame these as understandable states, not disasters.

Instead of “Your APY dropped,” say: “This week returns slowed as treasury yields shifted. Historically, these returns stabilize in X days.”

Instead of hiding a redemption delay, show: “92% of redemptions settled within 3 days. Your request is expected in 2.”

Negative states, contextualized, don’t scare people. They teach them how the system works.

The Psychology of Allocators

This is especially true for professional allocators.

If you’re moving $10 million into a vault, you don’t expect smoothness. You expect risk. What you want is visibility into how that risk is managed.

Show me the red numbers. Show me what triggered them. Show me how the system responded. That’s how you prove competence.

Retail users benefit too, even if they don’t fully parse the details. They see that the product is confident enough to disclose its own imperfections. That confidence itself is reassuring.

Hiding Creates Suspicion

When you hide volatility, you don’t erase it—you just push it downstream.

Users eventually see it anyway, whether in their returns, in unexplained delays, or in community rumors. By the time they do, the damage is worse. Because now it looks like you were hiding it.

And once users think you’re hiding things, it doesn’t matter how good your numbers are. The trust is gone.

Designing for Red

So what does it mean to design for red numbers?

1. Make volatility visible. Show the dips as well as the rises.

2. Contextualize. Pair every red number with an explanation and, when possible, historical data.

3. Normalize. Show negative states as part of the system’s breathing, not its collapse.

4. Act fast. If a true failure happens, communicate it the same way you’d communicate a signal: openly, clearly, and with next steps.

Design isn’t just about the interface. It’s about shaping how people interpret reality. If you teach them that red means failure, you’re training fragility. If you teach them that red means signal, you’re training resilience.

Closing

In crypto, where everything is supposed to be verifiable, the worst sin is hiding.

Red numbers may scare people in the short term. But in the long run, they’re what separates credible systems from Ponzi schemes. A dashboard that never goes red is a dashboard you shouldn’t trust.

The way forward is not to eliminate negative states, but to design for them.

Because in the end, red numbers are not failures. They’re proof you’re telling the truth.