The Guildwake board

Customers pin the quest. Guilds race to build it.

Guildwake is a quest board for real software jobs. A customer funds the work in USDC before anyone starts, a small guild of builders takes it on, and the crew is paid from that budget once the customer accepts what they built.

See what builders earn What $WAKE is for

Every job is paid in USDC, and $WAKE is your guild's membership, which we keep separate from pay on purpose.

Quest90,000 USDC

Bookings and payments for climbing gyms

  • Budget in USDC
  • Role shares
  • Acceptance tests

Funded before work starts

Quest60,000 USDC

Stock forecasts for a bakery group

Guilds send a short proposal, and the customer picks the crew whose plan fits the brief best.

Guilds wanted

A lead, a builder, a designer, a tester and a domain specialist make one guild.

The idea

A guild is a small crew that takes on a funded quest together.

Most software jobs worth doing need more than one pair of hands, and a lone freelancer rarely covers design, building, testing and real knowledge of the customer's trade all at once. So on Guildwake you work as a guild, a lead with a builder, a designer, a tester and a domain specialist, who pick up a funded quest as one crew and share the pay that comes with it.

You'll see four words everywhere on this page, and each one means exactly this.

Quest

A quest is a funded job on the board, and because the customer has already deposited the budget in USDC, the work is paid for before any guild picks it up.

Guild

The crew that takes a quest on. It keeps its name, banner and record from one quest to the next, which is how a good crew becomes known.

Brief

The customer's ask in writing: what they need, the budget, the deadline, how pay splits between roles, and the acceptance tests that decide when the work is done.

Roles

Lead, Builder, Designer, Tester and Domain specialist. On a smaller quest one person can hold two roles, but every role has to be covered by someone.

What builders earn

How you get paid for a quest.

Every quest comes with a budget in USDC that the customer deposits before anyone starts, and that budget is exactly what the crew is paid from. You never have to guess at a number or chase an invoice, because the money and the terms are both on the table before you say yes.

Where the money in a quest goes The customer funds the quest budget in USDC. When the customer accepts the work, most of the budget goes to crew pay, split between the lead, builder, designer, tester and domain specialist by the shares in the brief. A smaller part is Guildwake's margin, which covers scoping, review and support first; a share of the net margin buys $WAKE and the rest is reinvested in the network. Customer Funds the questin USDC Quest budget Deposited in USDCbefore work starts Paid out when thework is accepted Crew pay Split by the roleshares in the brief Lead Builder Designer Tester Domain specialist Guildwake margin Covers scoping, reviewand support first $WAKE buybackshare of net margin Reinvested inthe network Every share is agreed in the brief before anyone starts work. Where the money in a quest goes The customer funds the quest budget in USDC. When the work is accepted, most of it goes to crew pay, split between the lead, builder, designer, tester and domain specialist by the shares in the brief. A smaller part is Guildwake's margin; after costs, a share of the net margin buys $WAKE and the rest is reinvested. Customer Funds the quest in USDC Quest budget Deposited in USDC before work starts, paid out on acceptance Crew pay Split by role sharesset in the brief Guildwake margin Scoping and reviewcosts come out first Lead Builder Designer Tester Domain specialist $WAKEbuyback from a share of net margin Reinvested inthe network Every share is agreed in the brief before anyone starts work.

The brief sets the budget

The customer's brief states the total budget, the deadline and the acceptance tests up front, so you can judge whether a quest is worth your next few weeks before you commit to it.

Role shares are agreed first

Before any work starts, the guild agrees how the pay splits between the lead, the builder, the designer, the tester and the domain specialist, and that split is written into the brief so it can't quietly drift later.

You're paid when the work is accepted

Once the customer accepts the work against the tests in the brief, each person is paid their share in USDC straight from the funded budget. If a brief asks a shortlist for a short paid trial, that trial comes out of the budget too.

What the lead does with the split

The lead proposes the split, weighing who carries the most work and the most risk, gets every member to agree to it, and answers to the customer for delivery. A lead who splits fairly finds it far easier to crew the next quest.

Your record wins better quests

Every accepted quest adds to your guild's record and usually leaves a tested component you can reuse, like a payments module or a scheduling engine. That record is what wins larger quests, and the reused parts let you deliver more in the same weeks.

Quests

What a quest looks like on the board.

A quest is a real piece of work that needs several skills and several weeks, written so a crew can tell at a glance who it's for, what done means and what it pays. These five show the range of jobs the board is built for.

Quest90,000 USDC

Booking and payments for a chain of climbing gyms

For a climbing gym chain with several locations

Members want to book sessions, classes and gear rental online and pay once, instead of each front desk juggling a booking tool, a till and a spreadsheet.

Done means
Members book and pay from a phone, every desk sees the day's bookings, and payments reconcile with the accounts each night.
Roles
Lead, Builder, Designer, Tester, and a Domain specialist in gym operations
Time
About 12 weeks

Quest60,000 USDC

Inventory forecasting dashboard for a regional bakery group

For a bakery group with a central kitchen and a string of shops

Each shop orders by feel today, so some sell out by noon while others throw bread away at closing, and the group wants a forecast that learns from sales, weather and holidays.

Done means
Every shop gets a daily order suggestion it can adjust, and over a trial month both waste and sellouts fall against the month before.
Roles
Lead, Builder with data skills, Designer, Tester, and a Domain specialist in bakery operations
Time
About 10 weeks

Quest75,000 USDC

Permission forms app for a school district

For a public school district

Trips and activities still run on paper slips that get lost in backpacks, so staff spend hours chasing signatures, and the district wants parents to sign from a phone in the language they read.

Done means
Parents read and sign a form on any phone, teachers see who has signed as it happens, and the app passes the district's accessibility and privacy review.
Roles
Lead, Builder, Designer, Tester, and a Domain specialist in school administration and student privacy
Time
About 14 weeks

Quest50,000 USDC

Multilingual support assistant for an electronics retailer

For an online electronics retailer selling across Europe

The support team answers the same order and returns questions in five languages all day, and the retailer wants an assistant that handles the routine ones and hands everything else to a person with the full story attached.

Done means
The assistant answers order, delivery and returns questions correctly in every language on a test set the retailer writes, and passes every other case to a human cleanly.
Roles
Lead, Builder, Designer, Tester, and a Domain specialist in customer support
Time
About 8 weeks

Quest70,000 USDC

Fleet maintenance scheduler for a delivery company

For a regional delivery company running a large van fleet

Services are booked from a whiteboard and one mechanic's memory, so vans break down mid route, and the company wants servicing scheduled around mileage, inspections and the delivery schedule.

Done means
Every van has a service plan, clashes with routes are flagged before they happen, and the workshop runs on it for a month without going back to the whiteboard.
Roles
Lead, Builder, Designer, Tester, and a Domain specialist in fleet maintenance
Time
About 12 weeks

How a season works

Follow one quest across the board.

A season runs from a guild forming to the customer accepting the work and the margin being shared out. You can move the quest card yourself by dragging it between columns, using the arrow keys, or pressing Next, and the panel explains what happens at each step.

Open

Funded quests are pinned here

Claimed

Shortlisted guilds tie their ribbons

Underway

The chosen guild does the work

Accepted

Paid in USDC on acceptance

Quest card. Use the left and right arrow keys or press Enter to move it along the season.

Budget in USDC
Crew pay
Net margin
$WAKE buyback
Reinvest
Step 1 of 5

Guilds

Every guild hangs its own banner.

A guild keeps its name and its record from one season to the next, so it helps to have a mark that customers and other crews remember. Pick a crest below and raise it to see how your guild might look on the board.

Crests

Crests are drawn from a pattern, so every guild can have one of its own.

Who sits at the table

The first five roles make up a guild, and on a smaller quest one person can cover two of them. The last three sit around the guild rather than inside it.

  • Lead

    Forms the crew, writes the proposal, proposes the split and answers to the customer for delivery.

  • Builder

    Writes and ships the product, using their own AI tools or the shared allowances that come with the guild's membership.

  • Designer

    Shapes how the product looks and works, so the customer can judge a working preview early rather than a slide.

  • Tester

    Checks the work against the acceptance tests in the brief before the customer ever sees it.

  • Domain specialist

    Knows the customer's trade, whether that's running a gym or a school office, and keeps the build true to how the work is really done.

  • Customer

    Writes and funds the brief, then accepts the work against the tests it set at the start.

  • Guildwake staff

    Scope briefs with customers, check technical standards and handle disputes, with appeals going to an independent reviewer.

  • $WAKE member

    Holds a membership and votes on which builds the network backs, which is a separate thing from working on a quest.

The Guild Hall

Lead a season yourself.

The Guild Hall is a playable season on the same board, where you raise a guild, choose quests, crew them and make the trade offs a real lead faces. It's the quickest way to get a feel for how briefs, role shares and acceptance tests shape what a crew takes home.

  • Over a season you'll see how a fair split and a clean record help a guild win the better quests.
  • The Hall is a practice season, so nothing you do there touches real money, real customers or real coins.
Enter the Guild Hall
An open hall door with a lit quest board inside, guild banners on each side and a $WAKE coin on the step MEMBERSHIP Workspace Templates

$WAKE

What $WAKE is for.

$WAKE is the membership and coordination layer of Guildwake, and it sits beside the work rather than inside it. Holding it gives your guild a seat on the board, the tools to run a crew and a say in where the network puts its effort, while every quest is still paid in USDC.

The $WAKE coin: two wake chevrons forming a W on a brass disc

A seat and a workspace

Membership gives your guild its seat on the board and a shared team workspace, so the crew, its briefs and its record all live in one place. A larger balance opens more room as a guild grows.

Templates and tool allowances

Members draw on shared templates built from earlier quests and on allowances for the AI agent tools a builder uses day to day, with the cost of every tool published so nothing is hidden.

Proposals and votes

Members can submit proposals and vote on which builds and public challenges the network focuses on next. A vote can never change a customer's contract or overturn what a customer has accepted.

Buybacks from net margin

Guildwake earns its margin in USDC, and once costs are covered a share of that net margin goes to buying $WAKE in the open, where anyone can follow it. The rest is reinvested in the network.

What $WAKE is not

  • It isn't payment for work, and no quest is ever priced in it.
  • It isn't ownership of Guildwake or a claim on its profits.
  • It isn't an investment, and it carries no promise of any return.
  • It isn't proof of skill, and holding it doesn't make anyone a worker.

You shouldn't need capital to work

Pay comes from the customer's budget, so a skilled builder who holds no $WAKE can still join a crew and earn a full share. Sponsors can fund memberships too, because a guild seat is only worth having if the best builders can actually reach it.

What comes next

The road from here.

Here's the order we're working through, from the rules every quest depends on to guilds run by outside teams. Each stage is written up on this page as it lands, so you can always see what changed and why.

  1. The rulebook and the brief

    We'll publish the brief format, the acceptance tests, the terms for role shares and the rules for disputes and appeals, so every guild knows how the game works before it takes a quest.

  2. Treasury and buyback policy

    We'll set out how net margin is counted, the share that goes to $WAKE buybacks, and how anyone can follow each purchase from start to finish.

  3. The first funded season

    A funded quest goes on the board with several guilds competing for it, a public progress board, working previews and the customer's acceptance at the end. Anyone named appears only with their permission.

  4. Reusable components and upkeep

    Common parts like sign in, billing, scheduling, dashboards and deployment setups each get a licence and a maintainer, followed by monitoring, support and maintenance plans that keep paying crews after launch.

  5. Partner run guilds

    Guilds run by outside teams, and competing agent workflows, join the board, with delivery measured the same way for everyone.

Asked at the board

Questions builders ask.

How much can I earn on a quest?

It depends on three things you can see before you commit: the quest's budget in USDC, your role's share of it as agreed in the brief, and the customer accepting the work. There's no hidden pool and no bidding down after the fact.

Who decides how the pay is split?

The lead proposes the split and every member of the guild agrees to it before work starts. It's then written into the brief, so it can't quietly change halfway through the quest.

What if the customer doesn't accept the work?

The acceptance tests in the brief are the yardstick, so a disagreement is about whether the tests pass rather than about anyone's taste. Guildwake staff review disputes, and either side can appeal to an independent reviewer.

What happens to a guild that isn't picked?

It keeps its seat, its banner and its record, and it can go for the next quest straight away. If the brief asked a shortlist for a short paid trial, that trial is paid in USDC from the customer's budget.

Do I need $WAKE to work on a quest?

Your pay never depends on how much $WAKE you hold. $WAKE gives a guild its seat, workspace and tools, and sponsors can fund memberships so a good builder without any can still be crewed.

How does $WAKE connect to the work?

It gives a guild its seat, workspace, templates and tool allowances, plus the right to submit proposals and a vote on which builds and public challenges the network takes on. Separately, a share of Guildwake's net margin, earned in USDC, goes to $WAKE buybacks.

Who owns what a guild builds?

The customer receives the agreed rights to the work they paid for. A guild keeps only the components that are marked as reusable in the brief, and those become its head start on the next quest.

How do I get $WAKE?

How to hold $WAKE is announced on this page and nowhere else. Treat any address, listing or offer that isn't linked from here as not coming from Guildwake.

Where can I try a season?

In the Guild Hall, where you lead a guild through a whole season, from choosing quests to seeing where the margin goes.

Where do updates appear?

Changes to the rules, to membership and to the buyback policy are written on this page, each with a short note on what changed and why.