weekly.fun - The Global Contest Arcade

Eden from the Flower Heads Collection
Fleye from the Records Collection
Rocket Run thumbnail - Weekly's first ever game!
Farm Frenzy thumbnail - Weekly's first pseudo 3d game that's smooth as butter in a mobile browser!
DVD Master - Weekly's quirkiest, most nostalgic, highly satisfying game.
Echo from the Flower Heads Collection
Billy from the Records Collection

Inspiration

I was inspired to create Weekly.fun because I wanted to build skill-based contests that are globally accessible, and not intertwined with gambling or games of chance.

That combination became the foundation of Weekly: inclusive, non-exploitative competition built around good, clean fun.

I was also inspired by the idea of using blockchain technology in a way that normal people could genuinely benefit without needing to understand crypto or purchase crypto.

Weekly does not promote a custom token. There are no rugs, no meme coins, and no financial mechanics designed to exploit users. Solana is used because it provides open, global identity and micro-reward rails that the umbrella of traditional finance could not support.

Can we figure out a way to use adjacent technology from frequently exploitative spaces and apply it toward something ethical, practical, and fun for everybody?

Yes we can!

What it does

Weekly.fun is a Global Contest Arcade built for mobile browsers.

It serves a worldwide audience an ever-expanding library of lightweight games, free skill contests, weekly challenges, a long-term progression model, collectible idols, awards, and real micro-rewards.

Weekly currently includes six original games and the platform has reached over 900 players and 13,000 platform attempts from users around the world.

Players can sign in using:

An external Phantom wallet
An external Solflare wallet
Phantom Connect through Google or Apple

This gives both crypto-native and completely non-crypto users an easy way in.

Weekly hosts a live contest every week. Every contest is free to enter and uses an “everybody eats” reward model. Instead of one grand prize, Weekly rewards up to 300 players per contest with $1, depending on participation.

This is only possible on Solana, which makes global micro-rewards super inexpensive to distribute at scale and across borders.

Weekly is more than games. Players earn XP, level up, complete challenges, collect idols, customize profiles, and build a real history and identity on the platform.

Behind the scenes, Weekly includes a robust internal admin suite and development lab for contest operations, challenge seeding, reward management, avatar review, bug reports, game previewing, perspective experiments, world design, promotional scenes, and live stream overlays. The cool stuff that users don't see!

How I built it

Weekly.fun is the result of an ongoing partnership between one dedicated founder (me) and OpenAI.

Over roughly nine months and approximately 2,000 hours, I have worked closely with ChatGPT and Codex across product, UX, systems, implementation, infrastructure, debugging, game design, policy, documentation, operations, and more.

My formal background is not in computer science. I got my degree in Human Resource Management and began my career as a Compensation Analyst. Before experimenting with OpenAI tools, I had no traditional software-development background.

Along the entire build, ChatGPT has helped with higher-level reasoning, including:

Product framing
Policy design
Architecture discussions
Threat modeling
Work-package planning
Technical tradeoffs
Ethical decisions
Documentation and communication

And Codex worked directly in the repository by:

Inspecting existing systems
Implementing scoped changes
Creating and validating migrations
Modifying Cloudflare Worker behavior
Running checks and tests
Reviewing diffs
Debugging cross-system issues
Keeping implementation grounded in the actual codebase

I have directed the vision, product, design, policy, and engineering decisions. What we should build, what we should avoid, how systems should treat users, and when each package/stage was ready to move forward.

Technically, Weekly is built with:

TypeScript
JavaScript
React
Vite
Cloudflare Pages
Cloudflare Workers
Hono
Supabase Postgres
Cloudflare Hyperdrive
Solana
Phantom and Solflare wallet integrations
GPT-5.6 (and other models throughout its life)
Codex

Weekly games run inside sandboxed iframes and communicate with the parent through a shared protocol. The React application owns the player experience, while the Cloudflare Worker API remains authority on contests, attempts, scores, progression, rewards, and integrity systems.

Challenges I ran into

The largest challenge was making a mobile browser feel like a first-class gaming and platform environment.

Weekly is intentionally mobile-browser-first, which is unusual and technically demanding. I wanted the accessibility and global reach without treating the mobile browser as a second-class experience.

That required solving challenges around:

Full-screen and immersive layouts
Browser chrome and viewport behavior
Touch input
Wallet in-app browsers
Standard mobile browsers
iframe-hosted games
Navigation
Audio
Performance
Responsive game rendering
Consistent behavior across devices

Weekly’s MobileShell and immersive iframe-play-model allow the platform to visually and behaviorally take ownership of the browser in a way that feels much closer to a native app.

Another major challenge is contest integrity.

Free-entry contests with real rewards are highly inclusive, but they also create lanes for exploitation. The ease of creating new Solana wallets adds another abuse angle because one wallet does not always mean one unique participant.

During OpenAI Build Week, Codex and I designed and implemented a privacy-conscious, report-only contest integrity system that observes multiple pseudonymous signals across device, browser, network, account, contest, attempt, and exact avatar reuse behavior.

The system collects evidence without automatically punishing players.

No single signal proves abuse, and none currently triggers an automatic ban, payout hold, or gameplay restriction. The goal is to learn from real production behavior before defining a formal, evidence-based risk scoring and risk protocol.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am deeply proud of the entire platform and what it has become.

Weekly has grown from an ambitious idea into a live production system with:

Six original games
More than 900 players
More than 13,000 platform attempts
7 live contests so far
Real global reward payouts
Long-term progression that feels sustainable
Unique Weekly challenge sets
Collectible idols with beautiful art
Player profiles
Performance Awards
Wallet-based identity
Embedded Google and Apple sign-in through Phantom Connect
A robust internal admin suite
Internal game and world-design labs
Promotional scene tools
Live OBS overlay support
A production contest-integrity observation system

I am also very proud that Weekly has maintained and will maintain a clear ethical direction.

Contests are always free to enter. The platform does not promote gambling or games of chance. There is no custom token. Users do not need to purchase crypto, and a meaningful experience is available without a paywall.

Weekly also includes a user Status model that we hope can eventually support sustainable monetization while providing real value and staying non-exploitative.

Building a product that is fun, technically ambitious, globally accessible, and ethically grounded has been one of the most rewarding parts of the journey.

What I learned

I learned how difficult it is to manage a complete production platform that serves real users, hosts games, operates contests, distributes rewards, manages identity, and maintains internal ops. It's not easy, but I get better at it every day.

I also learned there's a big difference between simply building features and building systems the right way.

It is possible to move quickly and create long-term debt, unclear ownership, stale docs, unsafe migrations, fragile infrastructure, or systems that become difficult to reason about.

As Weekly has grown, I have become increasingly focused on:

Clear architecture
Strong repository governance
Reliable documentation
Explicit system boundaries
Migration discipline
Production validation
Operational truth
Privacy
Security
Ethical product decisions
Sustainable implementation practices

My goal is to keep pushing Weekly toward enterprise-level standards of repository management, architecture, truth, integrity, and operational maturity.

The project has also taught me that AI-assisted development is not about avoiding hard thinking.

The best results come from sustained collaboration, careful direction, repeated validation, strong product judgment, and a willingness to refine one system at a time.

What's next for Weekly.fun

The next major expansion is Hosted Contests.

Hosted Contests will allow players, creators, friends, and communities to create their own competitions using Weekly games and infrastructure.

Hosts will be able to organize contests for their own audiences and use supported Solana payout rails to distribute rewards (or run even simpler, no-prize contests).

This moves Weekly from a platform that hosts only its own contests into a place where friends and communities can run their own!

Will continue expanding:

The game library
Progression and idol collection
Weekly challenges
Creator tools
Contest operations
Stream overlays
Promotional scenes
Reward celebrations
Integrity reporting
Evidence-based anti-abuse protocols

Check this out: Longer term, Weekly’s infrastructure creates another exciting possibility...

AI agents are beginning to use the internet as first-class citizens, but most of the current focus is on productivity and collaboration.

Weekly could eventually become a place where agents can do something different.

They could play, compete, progress, collect, host contests, participate in leagues, and interact alongside human players!

Human-versus-agent competitions, agent-only leagues, hosted agent contests, and entire agent economies are not disconnected from the current platform architecture. Weekly’s browser-based games, contest systems, identity model, progression, reporting, and Solana reward rails already create much of the foundation such a future would require.

That is not the immediate product focus, but it's a really fun thought.

The short-term remains simple:

Keep building a fun, accessible, rewarding, and globally inclusive contest arcade.