For the past several months I’ve been building AURUM alone, a platform where achievements are backed by real money stakes instead of just being posts people scroll past.
The stack: Cloudflare Workers + D1 (SQLite) for the backend, Clerk for auth, Paystack for payments, plain JS + PWA on Cloudflare Pages for the frontend, dark “war-room” aesthetic, mobile-first, no framework overhead.
The core mechanics:
Proof of Stake: post a win, stake money on it, community verifies or disputes it
Duels: 1-on-1 competitions, either evidence-voted or instantly skill-resolved, with escrowed stakes
Tipping: anyone can tip a user’s win, feeding a shared pot that goes to the eventual winner
Crew Battles, team-vs-team wagers funded from a shared crew wallet
Referral system: users earn points for every signup through their link
A full escrow/dispute/payout system built from scratch, including idempotent payout logic and an admin dispute-resolution path
I’m a self-taught solo dev, no formal CS background, no mentor, no co-founder. Every backend route, every migration, every frontend page is mine. Happy to answer questions about the architecture, the money movement/escrow design, or what it’s like shipping solo under real time pressure.
Live at tryaurum.store would love feedback from this community, technical or otherwise.