What we changed
Every decision, with the reason attached.
Including the ones where we listened carefully and still said no.
Brands ask what you think and then do what they were going to do anyway. You can tell, because you never hear what happened next.
So this page. Every open question we work through ends up here: what was asked, who answered, what we decided — and the part that actually matters, what we decided not to change, and why.
If you wrote something into the drawer, this is where you find out what happened to it. Including the times the answer was no.
If an entry here ever reads as flattering to us, we've written it wrong.
The perfume came out. The formula was made a second time.
The first version of this serum had perfume in it. Julian sent it back and had the formula remade without it.
That is the whole of it, and it is the only change to the formula so far. The factory put it in writing on August 4, 2026, along with two others: no SPF, and phenoxyethanol at 0.45%.
A second production run, paid for after the first one already existed. We're not putting a number on it here, because a number would turn it into a boast. What it bought was the removal of one ingredient, and nothing else about the serum changed.
Fragrance-free is not the same as gentle. There is a preservative in this bottle — phenoxyethanol, 0.45% — and some people react to it. There are two colorants in it as well. So we are not going to call this serum clean, or gentle, or made for sensitive skin, and if you ever see us print one of those three words, we've broken our own rule.
Taking the perfume out removed one common reason to stop using a serum. It removed one. That's the honest size of it.
The two colorants
The question: should the two colorants come out of the serum?
Nobody, and we'd rather say that than dress it up. We didn't put this one to a vote. We went looking instead: nine questionnaires from people on the list, the whole support inbox, and 1,326 US reviews across fifteen competing serums.
- In the questionnaires and the inbox, color came up zero times. What people wrote about was disappointment with things they'd tried before, and uneven tone.
- Across 20,941 reviews, the word "dye" appears zero times.
- "Pink" appears 224 times, mostly as a compliment.
- Of the 1,326 reviews we read closely, one named the colorant as a reason not to buy. That's 0.08%.
The two colorants stay in the first run. CI 16035 at 0.00036% and CI 15985 at 0.0002%. Both are approved for cosmetics in the US and the EU.
They do nothing. No effect, no preservation. They're in there because Julian wanted it to look like something. We'd rather tell you that than call it functional.
Why pink, specifically: it's a visual reference to the salmon our PDRN comes from. That was a choice about appearance, nothing more. The pink comes from the added colorants, not from the PDRN itself, and it does nothing for your skin. It stays that way in the first run — the formula is written and the safety work is running on it.
Our first argument for keeping them was that coloring is the category standard. We went and checked. It isn't.
Of 25 US serums we looked at, four use a dye — and all four sit in the budget tier. medicube doesn't dye; its pink comes from vitamin B12. The Ordinary doesn't. Anua doesn't, and says so on the box. Skintific uses CI 16035 in a gel, not in the serum.
So the argument we started with was wrong, and it was wrong in the direction that suited us. That's the one worth writing down. The honest reason to keep them isn't that everybody does it. It's that, as far as we can measure, it stops nobody from buying.
We did not take the colorants out. Not because the question is a bad one — because pulling them now formally makes it a different formula, and a different formula means starting the lab test over. The test itself runs 28 days; the written report takes longer than the test. Paid a second time, on a test we've already paid for once.
When we'd reopen it: if the color turns up in returns or in abandoned checkouts. Not in comments — comments are cheap and we'd be fooling ourselves. And the change would go into the second batch, not into the middle of the first.
"Is it vegan?"
People kept asking. We didn't know, so for a while we said we didn't know, which satisfied nobody including us. We put the question to the factory.
The answer came back on August 18, in these words: "The sodium DNA in the product is from salmon."
So the answer is no. It isn't vegan, and there's no version of that sentence that reads better.
What we got wrong in this entry, and corrected on September 1, 2026: we wrote that PDRN is salmon-derived and that this is simply what PDRN is. It isn't. There is a version made by fermenting bacteria instead of taking it from fish, and it carries the same name on an ingredient list, Sodium DNA, so a label will not tell you which one you are holding. Ours is from salmon. That is a choice we made, not a fact about the category, and we should have written it that way the first time.
We did not go looking for a fermented substitute for the first run. The formula is written and the safety work is running on it, and changing the raw material now starts that over.
When we'd reopen it: one published paper puts the two side by side and the fermented one comes out ahead — in test tubes and cell culture, not on anybody's face. Nobody has compared the two on human skin, and two of that paper's authors work for the companies that sell the fermented version. If an outside group ever runs that comparison on skin, this goes back on the table. It would go into a later batch, not into the middle of the first one, and it would be written here first.
We asked what the last serum you gave up on had promised you.
Every answer that clears reading goes up word for word on the drawer — spelling and all, including the ones that make the whole category look bad. The count lives there and not here, so this page can't quietly go out of date on you. A few are always still being read: nothing goes up automatically, and nothing goes up edited. Here is what they were promised:
- "Removes dark spots almost overnight"
- "It said lessens crows feet."
- "You will see results."
- "Skip the painful 'retinol purge' and irritation."
- "Instant results"
- "The world"
- "Absolutely nothing"
One of them wrote this: "Safe for sensitive skin. Wont cause breakouts (it did)."
That sentence is the reason Entry 01 above ends the way it does. Safe for sensitive skin is a promise we are not going to make, because there is a preservative and two colorants in this bottle and we can't stand behind it. Somebody was told that once already, and it wasn't true.
We have not changed the formula because of anything on that list. We're telling you what it did change: what we're willing to write.
A question you can't lose is not a question.
These are the ones we could lose.
Does topical PDRN actually work?
You will find people online saying it can't. "The molecules are too big to be absorbed." "It doesn't penetrate. It just sits on top of your skin." "It's a marketing gimmick." We read all of that before you did, and we are not going to argue with it.
Here is the whole picture instead, including the part that flatters us.
PDRN was studied as an injection. That is where its reputation came from, and an injection is not what this is. For a long time the honest sentence was that nothing had ever shown it getting into human skin out of a bottle. That sentence stopped being true in July 2026. A paper published that month in PLOS One reported PDRN moving past 20 µm into the living upper layer of human skin — around 3% of what was applied, after 8 to 24 hours.
So we are not going to tell you it can't get in. What we will tell you is why that paper does not let us promise you anything:
- The authors work in the cosmetics industry. Nobody independent has repeated it.
- It tested 0.1% in an eye cream. This is 1% in a serum. What carries an ingredient matters as much as how much of it is in there, so the result does not simply transfer.
- It tested a defined fragment length. Our label says sodium DNA, and we do not have our own fragment length in writing yet — so we are not entitled to point at that paper and let you assume it is about this bottle.
- Getting past 20 µm is not the same as reaching the deeper layer of skin in a living person. That part of the work was done on pig skin, in a dish.
We are not claiming this serum does what an injection does. We are not going to show you a collagen percentage. We have no before-and-after photos — and when we do have them, you will get the ones that don't flatter us as well.
What we will tell you is what is in the bottle, at what concentration, and where it came from. That is on the product page, in full, every ingredient with its number.
Every serum in this category is sold on a promise. This one is sold on a list. If that isn't enough, it isn't enough — and we would rather you knew that now than after it arrived.
Four letters that don't read the way we set them
A reader wrote to say that on one of our ad images, the four letters PDRN run together and get misread as a different word — one that has nothing to do with skincare. Once she'd said it, we couldn't unsee it.
It affects the image, and it may affect the label, which is a more expensive thing to change. We have not decided. It's written here so it can't quietly go away while we think about it.
Asked, and still no usable answer
These are with the factory. When answers come back, they go here — including the ones we won't like.
The sodium DNA: what is its fragment length?
PDRN is a specification about how long the fragments are. Sodium DNA is not. Until we have our own number in writing, we cannot tell you whether the published research on PDRN describes what is in this bottle — which is why the entry above stops where it stops. We're still getting that one confirmed. It goes here when it comes back, whatever it says.
The six peptides: is 0.5% each the raw material as delivered, or 0.5% pure peptide?
Asked August 17, 2026. An answer came back and it didn't answer the question, so we're asking again. Most peptides are sold diluted, so we expect it's the raw material — but expecting isn't knowing, and the number is on the product page.
— Julian