# Creator community platform

**Result:** $10K+ a month in payouts  
**Category:** Payments  
**Stack:** React, Node.js, MongoDB, Stripe Connect, Authentication and access control

A creator community platform with communities, courses, chat, a feed and live streams, rebuilt after its first developer left. Automated creator payouts with a payout ledger and a referral system.

## Payouts that stopped going missing.

A creator community with 1,000+ paying members, rebuilt after its first developer left with a half-built Stripe Connect integration.

- Role: Lead full-stack engineer
- Timeline: December 2025 to now
- Domain: Payments, creator economy

### The problem

Payout state lived only in Stripe’s webhooks. One dropped webhook meant one missed creator payout. Money was coming in, but creators were not reliably paid.

### The decision

I moved payout state into the platform’s own database, with Stripe as the rail, not the record.

### Results

- **$10K+** paid out automatically each month
- **1,000+** active members
- **+25%** organic sign-ups from the referral system
- **0** missed payouts since the ledger shipped

## What I did

1. **Audit.** Mapped every Stripe Connect event and traced where money and status got stuck.
2. **Webhooks.** A listener verifies every payout event. A failed transfer is flagged, retried with exponential backoff, and the ops team is told if it fails twice.
3. **Owned state.** The database owns onboarding and payout status; it is never inferred from Stripe at request time.
4. **Gated payouts.** Payouts fire only when an account is fully verified.
5. **Dunning.** Retry windows and email nudges for failed onboarding and failed subscription charges.

## What it does

- Communities with member referral links
- Academy courses with progress tracking
- Channels, direct messages and member roles
- Feed with posts and comments
- Live streams
- Role-based access across 20+ community tiers

Screenshots are blurred and anonymised. Page: https://venuspaneliya.com/work/creator-community-platform/