12. Abi - Product Lead @ Zerion

Welcome to product3 - exploring web3 product development through the eyes of its builders.

Meet Abi Dharshan (@abishekinguout), the Product Lead for Zerion API, the onchain data layer powering wallets and dapps like Uniswap, Rainbow, Farcaster & Zerion Wallet itself. He’s been building, investing, and writing about crypto and startups since his late teens.

Oh, and he’s hiring sales, solutions, and backend engineers to help scale Zerion API!

In less than 1000 words, he shares:

• What metrics he finds most valuable when measuring success

• How building for consumers and developers creates powerful feedback loops

• Zerion’s positioning in the ecosystem

• Abi’s approach to making web3's complexity feel approachable

• Advice for his younger self

What metrics do you find most valuable when measuring success in web3 products?

In crypto, people often chase the loudest metrics, TVL, token price, MAUs (with bots in disguise). I care more about intentional usage, and it depends on the context tbh. 

For a wallet product, it’s things like weekly or monthly transacting wallets. Are people not just showing up, but actually doing something onchain?

For the API, the lens is different. I care about the depth, relevance, and scale of integration, are we embedded into workflows, powering real interfaces like transactions, PnL and DeFi positions? Are we a critical dependency, not just another optional tool? If yes, we’re doing our job. Everything else, revenue, conversion, sales velocity, flows downstream from that.

That said, I love how the space keeps inventing its own KPIs. One of our API customers, Stablewatch, coined “YPO: Yield Paid Out” as the new TVL for yield-bearing stablecoins, since it tracks actual returns, not just inflated token rewards. With the launch of their new wallet, Farcaster recently announced their north star at FarCon as Weekly Transacting Wallets, using the same metrics the rest of us wallet teams use.

In short: the best metric is the one that reflects real value creation, not just vibes you post only when the line goes up.

You're building both consumer apps and developer APIs — how do these two audiences influence each other in your product roadmap?

Building for both consumers and developers creates a tight feedback loop. The Zerion wallet shows us how users experience onchain complexity, what clicks, what breaks, and that insight shapes the API. Meanwhile, developers push the API into new territory, which unlocks new UX possibilities for the wallet, both in scale and features. This results in a shared foundation where both products get better, faster, together.

At the core of this is data.

Having an API forces us to be better at data. To serve developers, our onchain data has to be reliable, well-structured, and deeply contextual, there’s no room for errors. That discipline ends up benefiting the wallet too, since the same data backbone powers both sides of the product.

Funny enough, the wallet is also how many of our API customers first discover us: they use it and notice that we surface DeFi positions no one else does or send push notifications faster than other wallets, for instance. Others come through word of mouth, usually from engineering leaders at top wallets and dapps who already trust our API in production.

With the overlap between your wallet and API, how do you personally think about Zerion’s role in the ecosystem? How should others see you?

Funny story from ETHDenver, I was catching up with my friend Justin from Safary. Mid-convo, we realized something. He thought of Zerion as a wallet company, used us as a portfolio tracker, but remembered his own company is actually a Zerion API customer.

Moments like that sum it up. We’re in a unique spot, powering products on both sides of the stack. And while our roadmap lives in that intersection shaped by usage patterns, developer needs, and the data that streams between them — it does raise an interesting existential question: what exactly are we?

Are we a wallet company? A data infra provider? A portfolio tracker?

I’d like to think we’re a data company at heart, building tools we want to use ourselves as crypto-native builders. Whether it’s a wallet or an API, everything we ship reflects that same core belief, that better data leads to better products. And if that helps move the space forward, even better.

What's your approach towards the fundamental UX challenge of making web3's technical complexity feel approachable to everyday users?

I usually start by ignoring the fact that we’re building on a blockchain. The user doesn’t care about gas fees or smart contracts, they care about solving a problem. So we design the experience first, then figure out how to abstract the crypto away.

Within consumer crypto, we could follow a “crypto-optional” model. For example, instead of showing “Transaction pending on Ethereum mainnet,” we could show “Your transfer is processing, we’ll notify you when it’s done.” Same function, just human language. On the API side, we take the same approach, giving developers normalized data across chains, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they support a new chain.

There’s always tension between crypto-native users who want full control and mainstream users who want simplicity. We solve for that with layered UX, simple defaults with progressive access to advanced features.

At the end of the day, most users don’t care if it’s WETH or ETH, or what chain ID they’re on. They just want to know what they own, what it’s worth, and what they can do with it. Our job is to surface the right info at the right time and let the complexity fade into the background. If we get the data right, the UX tends to follow. Abstract the chains, abstract the right data :)

What would you advise your younger self?

Wait a couple of years until AI makes your job 10x easier. I’m kidding, kind of. It’s phenomenal how much faster we can ship now, but the core lesson still stands: don’t wait.

Ship faster. Talk to more users. Don’t over-polish before sharing. Most of web3 is held together by duct tape and conviction anyway. And get comfortable being early, it’ll feel like being wrong until it doesn’t. I always like to say not a matter of if but when.

IIf you’ve enjoyed this micro interview share it with fellow web3 product people and give Abi a follow on X (@abishekinguout).

Got a builder in mind whose wisdom we should share? Please share!

See you in the next edition!