- The ask
- One seller wanted a shop. Then ten did. Running ten copies of the same code — ten databases, ten deploys, ten sets of updates — collapses under its own weight long before ten becomes a hundred.
- What I built
- One platform instead. A merchant signs up and walks out with their own domain, their own storefront and theme, their own customers, their own wallet — all served from one platform and one deploy. Three apps sit on it: the storefront buyers use, the merchant dashboard, and the platform admin.
- What changed
- Live at 1ar.store. Adding a merchant is a row in a table, not a deployment. Merchants can also sell each other stock, which turns the platform into a small B2B market rather than a pile of separate shops.
How it works 01 One platform, many stores
A visitor always lands in exactly one merchant’s store, and working out which one costs the platform the same whether it is carrying ten merchants or ten thousand. That was a design constraint from the first line of code, not something bolted on when the tenth merchant arrived.
02 Isolation by design, not by discipline
Merchants share infrastructure and never share data. That holds by design rather than by everyone remembering to be careful, and it is verified automatically, so it cannot quietly stop being true months later. Designing it that way is the difference between a platform and ten copies of a shop.
03 Money that survives a retry
A purchase either completes fully or does not happen at all — there is no state where a buyer is charged and holds nothing. A double-tapped button, a lost connection or a retried request settles once and only once. If a supplier cannot deliver, the money returns on its own, and returning it twice is impossible by construction.
04 Balances funded in crypto
Merchants and buyers top up with USDT, and a balance only moves once the payment behind it is real — a claimed payment and a settled one are never confused. No card processor sits in the middle, which matters in markets where card rails are not an option.
05 Stores that sell to other stores
A merchant can resell another merchant’s catalogue, which turns the platform into a small B2B market instead of a pile of separate shops. Everyone along the chain ends up paid what they are owed, and a longer chain of resellers never makes a sale slower or heavier.
06 Nine suppliers, one interface
Every way of fulfilling an order — external providers, digital codes from local stock, manual delivery — looks the same to the rest of the platform. A new supplier can be taken on without the checkout customers use changing at all.