Example Architecture

Marketplace architecture.

A complete two-sided marketplace architecture. Buyer/seller flows, Stripe Connect payments, search and discovery, reviews, and dispute resolution - all designed by AI.

Marketplace components

Dual user system

Separate buyer and seller flows with distinct dashboards, permissions, and onboarding.

Payment processing

Stripe Connect for split payments, escrow, refunds, and platform fees.

Search and discovery

Full-text search with filters, categories, and relevance ranking.

Reviews and ratings

Two-way review system for trust building between buyers and sellers.

Messaging

In-app messaging between buyers and sellers with notification support.

Admin dashboard

Platform management, dispute resolution, analytics, and user moderation.

How it works

Map your entire two-sided platform—buyers, sellers, and everything between them—in three steps.

1

Describe your marketplace

Define your buyer and seller personas, listing structure, matching logic, transaction model, and trust mechanisms. Cybewave processes marketplace-specific patterns including two-sided flows, escrow systems, and multi-party interactions unique to platform businesses.

2

AI designs the platform topology

The engine maps buyer-facing features alongside seller-facing tools, connects both to shared platform services like search, payments, messaging, and dispute resolution, and identifies the admin layer that monitors and moderates the entire ecosystem.

3

See the complete architecture

Export diagrams showing buyer flows, seller flows, admin operations, and the platform services connecting them all. Use these for investor presentations, technical recruiting conversations, or critical platform scaling decisions.

When to use marketplace architecture diagrams

Marketplace platforms have unique architectural challenges that demand visual clarity at every growth stage.

Two-sided marketplace design

Map buyer and seller journeys in parallel to identify shared components, divergent flows, and platform chokepoints. Every feature has two sides: listing creation vs discovery, messaging sender vs receiver, review writer vs subject.

Escrow and payment splitting

Diagram the money flow: buyer payment capture, platform hold period, seller payout trigger, refund paths, and platform fee extraction. Marketplace payment architecture is orders of magnitude more complex than single-merchant checkout.

Review and rating systems

Architect bidirectional reputation: buyers rate sellers, sellers rate buyers, and the platform aggregates scores, detects fraudulent reviews, and weights recency. Each component touches different data sources and triggers different workflows.

Search and matching algorithms

Visualize the pipeline from raw listings through indexing, relevance ranking, personalization, and sponsored placement. See how search quality depends on data flowing from seller profiles, buyer behavior signals, and platform curation rules.

Fraud detection architecture

Map the signals—transaction velocity, device fingerprints, payment patterns, behavioral anomalies—that feed into risk scoring models and trigger automated or manual review workflows for both buyers and sellers on your platform.

Seller onboarding flows

Diagram KYC verification, payment account setup, listing creation, quality checks, and approval pipelines. Seller onboarding is a complex state machine that directly impacts marketplace supply, liquidity, and time-to-first-transaction.

Why marketplace architecture matters

Marketplaces are among the most architecturally complex consumer applications ever built. Every feature has at least two perspectives—buyer and seller—and many have three when you include platform administration. A product listing is simultaneously a seller's inventory item, a buyer's search result, and an admin's moderation target. Payments flow through escrow accounts, split between sellers and the platform, and branch into refund paths that each party experiences differently.

The coordination challenge is what separates marketplace architecture from simpler systems. Your search service must balance buyer relevance with seller fairness. Your payment service must handle split payouts, delayed captures, and dispute holds simultaneously. Your messaging service must route conversations between strangers while maintaining safety boundaries. Each of these systems works fundamentally differently than its single-sided equivalent in a standard e-commerce or SaaS application.

Without clear architecture diagrams, marketplace teams make decisions that optimize one side at the expense of the other. Seller onboarding gets streamlined but buyer trust features lag behind. Payment captures speed up but refund paths break. Architecture visibility is the foundation that lets marketplace teams make balanced, informed decisions about their uniquely complex two-sided platform.

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AI-designed marketplace architecture with scaffolded code. Free to start.

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