donuts.tg

Overview

donuts.tg let creators, streamers, and small merchants accept crypto payments on TON. Buyers could pay in almost any TON token, including volatile meme coins, and a crypto payment can’t be reversed, so the amount on screen had to be right at the moment of payment.

I was the founding designer and designed the product across three surfaces: the buyer checkout, the merchant dashboard, and the internal admin panel.

What I Did

• Designed checkout for volatile tokens: payment window, rate lock, re-quotes, and recovery from insufficient funds
• Designed the merchant dashboard: orders, balance, payment settings, integration, and staff roles
• Designed the internal admin panel: users and merchants, roles, sign-in, search and filters, stats, and payment history with commissions
• Interviewed merchants about accounting, tax reporting, and the payment processors they already used, and reworked the dashboard home around what they needed for their books

Checkout

• Two timers instead of one: ten minutes to pay, and a 60-second lock on the exchange rate, shown next to the dollar equivalent
• When the rate expires, the re-quote shows the old and the new amount side by side instead of silently changing the number
• When the wallet doesn’t hold enough, the screen says how much is available and offers to change the coin
• Payment by QR code or a connected wallet, with success and error states
• After design review, the token picker became a single list instead of separate “Popular” and “All tokens” sections

Merchant Dashboard

• The balance is split into what can be withdrawn and a 48-hour reserve for refunds, with a line explaining why
• Each order keeps its fiat value and the exchange rate with the time it was locked, which is what accountants and tax reports need
• Accepting every TON token requires confirming a warning that some are highly volatile
• API keys are shown once and can be revoked; webhooks, redirect URLs, and a choice between API and CMS-plugin integration
• Staff roles, with a confirmation that lists what a promotion to administrator grants
• A store can’t be deleted while it has active transactions or a balance

Outcome

donuts.tg launched in beta and processed live payments from real merchants. The company closed in December 2024 when funding ran out: merchants wanted more networks than TON, and the next step required a banking license.