👋🏽 A bit of context

Blockscout is an open-source block explorer for EVM-based chains.

I'm Tom Goriunov, a front-end developer on the Blockscout team.

We started the project in the summer of 2022, and at that time Chakra UI was at the peak of UI frameworks with its fresh v2. We were looking for neutral-looking, composable, and fully customizable components, along with an easy-to-setup design system that could be adjusted for a specific app instance at runtime. We also wanted dark theme support out of the box and a short learning curve to help speed up development during the initial project phase.

"We wanted neutral-looking, fully customizable components with dark theme support out of the box, and Chakra gave us exactly that."

Styling, for sure

Styling is the one thing Chakra let me do faster than I expected. Setting up theming for the app to match our design system was a breeze. The mental model of how Chakra handles colors, spacing, and text was easy to grasp, and it was straightforward to override styles for specific components.

"I became so used to Chakra's mental model for colors and spacing that other projects without it feel slower now."

What tripped me up

Not much, honestly. We did have some challenges with breakpoint value hooks and their default values for different device types, but we eventually sorted it out.

Advice for developers

If you're starting a new mid or large-sized project and need your app's design to be easily customizable without spending too much time learning new tools, Chakra UI is definitely worth considering.