A freelance marketplace that treats Web3 as its own category, not an afterthought.
A freelance marketplace that treats Web3 as its own category, not an afterthought.
General freelance platforms like Upwork weren't built with blockchain work in mind — their categories, payment rails, and trust systems assume traditional IT and fiat currency. Soana starts from the opposite direction: a marketplace built specifically around what the crypto industry actually hires for — smart contract development, dApp engineering, contract audits, tokenomics — paid in TON, with escrow enforced by smart contracts instead of platform trust. This started as my thesis project in college, defended with the highest grade. It didn't stay an academic exercise — it's a real, live product now.
What it does.
TON payments — every transaction between client and freelancer settles in TON, no banks, no international transfer delays, no currency conversion friction. Smart-contract escrow — client funds lock at project start and stay held in a smart contract until the work is accepted. Neither side can renege; the terms are enforced by code, not platform reputation. Telegram Mini App — the entire platform runs inside Telegram, no separate app to install, no standalone registration. One-tap login through a Telegram account, then browsing, hiring, and paying all happen in the chat. Full web version — alongside the Mini App, a complete website at soana.tech for anyone who prefers working from a browser, with a more expansive interface for search and filtering. A category taxonomy built for Web3 — smart contract development, dApp engineering, contract audits, tokenomics, sit alongside traditional categories — design, content, marketing, consulting — but framed around crypto-native hiring, not retrofitted from a generic freelance template. Separate flows for clients and freelancers — clients post projects and search talent; freelancers build a portfolio, respond to postings, and build reputation through a profile.
My role.
Built end to end — from market research to launch: market and competitor analysis in the Web3 freelance segment, product architecture and the escrow logic itself, UX/UI design across the full interface, frontend development, TON payment and escrow integration, the Telegram Mini App build, service category taxonomy, and analytics setup ahead of launch.
The hard part.
Escrow that actually holds up isn't a UI feature — it's the entire trust model of the platform. Money has to lock the moment a project starts and release only on acceptance, with no path for either side to route around it. Getting that logic right, and getting a payment flow denominated in TON to feel as simple as tapping a button in Telegram, was the core engineering problem underneath everything else on the site.
A freelance platform that doesn't feel like a spreadsheet with a search bar.
Most freelance marketplaces default to dense, utilitarian layouts — long lists, minimal hierarchy, an interface optimized for filtering rather than trust. Web3 hiring already carries enough unfamiliar friction (wallets, escrow, a currency most clients haven't used before); the interface needed to reduce friction everywhere it could, rather than add to it.
What I took from it.
A working marketplace where a Web3 client and a freelancer can go from first contact to a paid, escrow-protected deal without leaving Telegram. Building the whole thing solo — product thinking, design, frontend, and the payment/escrow layer — meant there was no one else to hand off the parts I was less confident in. The smart-contract escrow logic in particular forced a level of precision that a purely visual project never would have: get the trust mechanism wrong, and nothing else about the platform matters.
