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Milestone History Overview
VelaPay's development history from foundation to advanced billing — a record of what shipped, what was learned, and what patterns persisted across eight milestones and counting.
Complete Timeline
| Milestone | Phases | Plans | Shipped | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| v1.0 Foundation | 5 | 20 | 2026-03-31 | Starting |
| v1.1 Arcium Privacy | 8 | 26 | 2026-04-02 | 2 days |
| v1.2 Admin Dashboard | 10 | 36 | 2026-04-06 | 4 days |
| v1.3 Merchant Login | 3 | 13 | 2026-04-07 | 2 days |
| v1.4 Agent Mandates | 2 | 13 | 2026-04-07 | 1 day |
| v1.5 Hosted Checkout | 7 | 37 | 2026-04-09 | 2 days |
| v1.6 Docs Revamp | 4 | 16 | 2026-04-10 | 2 days |
| v1.7 Protocol Modularity | 5 | 29 | 2026-04-15 | 3 days |
| v1.8 Advanced Billing | 3 | 47 | In progress | Active |
Total plans completed: 206+ (as of v1.7 completion) Total execution time: ~36 hours across all milestones Average plan duration: ~15 minutes
Cumulative Stats
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total commits | 613+ |
| Total files changed | 749 |
| Total lines added | ~142,270 |
| Milestones shipped | 8 |
| Active milestone | 1 (v1.8) |
| Repo count | 7 (vela-protocol, vela-sdk, vela-dashboard, vela-admin, vela-web, vela-docs, vela-widget) + 2 checkout/portal |
Velocity Over Time
The project accelerated through successive milestones, with early milestones establishing patterns that later ones refined:
v1.0 (5 phases, 20 plans) — baseline, protocol + SDK + dashboard + landing + docs
v1.1 (8 phases, 26 plans) — privacy layer, keeper, widget, analytics
v1.2 (10 phases, 36 plans) — largest milestone, admin dashboard with gap closure
v1.3 (3 phases, 13 plans) — focused auth milestone
v1.4 (2 phases, 13 plans) — agent mandates, highest density
v1.5 (7 phases, 37 plans) — hosted checkout, most plans per milestone
v1.6 (4 phases, 16 plans) — docs-only, lowest coupling
v1.7 (5 phases, 29 plans) — infrastructure refactor for extensibility
v1.8 (3 phases, 47 plans) — most plans per phase, streaming + upgrades + webhooksCross-Milestone Themes
Process Evolution
Each milestone taught the team something about the GSD workflow itself:
- v1.0–v1.1: Established the base multi-repo workflow, testing patterns, and deployment pipelines. Learned that transfer hooks work as a billing engine.
- v1.2: Introduced workstream structure, explicit validation phases, and the gap-closure pattern. First milestone with 4 dedicated cleanup phases (20–23).
- v1.3: First milestone to run a pre-archival audit, catching 6 categories of gaps before shipping. Established the "audit before archive" rule.
- v1.4: Highest plan density per phase — proved that focused, narrow milestones execute cleanly.
- v1.5: Most plans per milestone (37). Accepted tech debt explicitly (staging validation deferred to v1.8).
- v1.6: Docs-only milestone. Proved that docs milestones benefit from the same audit rigor as code milestones.
- v1.7: Infrastructure-only refactor. Two gap-closure phases (43, 44) taught the lesson that "unit tests pass ≠ integration works."
Patterns That Persisted
These patterns appeared in multiple milestones and became standard practice:
- On-chain as source of truth — Every shortcut that cached on-chain data in D1 for critical paths eventually required remediation. Trust the chain.
- Milestone audit before archival — v1.2, v1.3, v1.5, v1.6, and v1.7 audits all found issues that would have been production gaps.
- Separate auth from feature work — Auth gates should be their own phase. Mixing auth + features creates integration complexity.
- Validation debt compounds — Deferred test stubs and Nyquist gaps accumulate. Dedicated closure phases are more effective than in-band fixes.
- Build-time link validation — starlight-links-validator caught 34 broken links in v1.6. Essential for docs-heavy milestones.
Patterns That Were Rejected
- D1 cache for security-critical paths — Tried in v1.2 emergency cancel, remediated in Phase 23.
- Wallet-first merchant login — Tried in v1.0, rejected in v1.3 after Playwright caught real UX issues.
- Single-mint billing — Accepted in v1.0, replaced with TokenConfig registry in v1.7 Phase 41.
What Each Milestone Contributed
| Milestone | Key Contribution |
|---|---|
| v1.0 | Proved the transfer-hook billing model works end-to-end |
| v1.1 | Proved Arcium encrypted compute can validate billing without exposing amounts |
| v1.2 | Proved admin ops can be gated by on-chain PDAs, not env allowlists |
| v1.3 | Proved email-first auth is the right model for merchants |
| v1.4 | Proved agent payment ceilings can be enforced on-chain (Colosseum winner) |
| v1.5 | Proved Stripe-grade billing UX is achievable with Solana primitives |
| v1.6 | Proved developer docs can be audience-segmented and link-validated |
| v1.7 | Proved versioned accounts and extensible PDAs are cheap insurance |
| v1.8 | Proving streaming, upgrades, and multi-token work without breaking changes |
Retrospective Sources
The detailed retrospective for each milestone is drawn from:
.planning/RETROSPECTIVE.md— living document updated after each milestone.planning/MILESTONES.md— canonical milestone completion log.planning/milestones/v{X}-MILESTONE-AUDIT.md— per-milestone audit reports.planning/ROADMAP.md— phase-level roadmap with completion markers.planning/phases/{N}-{name}/— phase artifacts, summaries, and verification files