# Melvin Wafula

> Senior Backend Engineer, Digital Assets & Digital Health, Available for remote work. I build backend systems for digital assets and digital health. In both, a wrong record costs someone their money or their care.

Backend engineer with four years of professional work on digital assets. I've built lending platforms, NFT marketplaces, a bitcoin on-ramp and an on-chain game, and the lending platform I maintain at Shufl Labs moves over $10,000 in loans a month. Since 2025 I have also worked in digital health. I'm building a national registry for kidney patients and converting the national kidney guidelines into a WHO SMART Guideline. The two fields overlap more than people expect. Both need records you can audit, systems that recover cleanly when something fails, and shared standards so institutions can exchange data (FHIR in health, open ledgers in finance). That overlap is where I want to work next.

## Machine-readable

- [CV (PDF)](https://melvin.pentacostai.com/Melvin-Wafula-CV.pdf)
- [Full profile as JSON](https://melvin.pentacostai.com/api/profile)
- MCP server (Streamable HTTP, read-only tools): https://melvin.pentacostai.com/api/mcp
- Contact: melvinwafula@gmail.com

## Experience

- **Founder & Lead Engineer, PentacostAi** (2026 – Present). My own studio. The first product is AlgoCity, a four-player city-trading game on Algorand MainNet in which AI agents can take a seat.
- **Blockchain Developer, Shufl Labs** (Jul 2024 – Present). Backend and smart-contract work for the Shufl NFT marketplace and the Goanna DAO lending platform. I'm an admin of the Al Goanna and Rand Gallery GitHub organisations.
- **Backend / Blockchain Developer, MulaStack** (Mar 2024 – Present). A service for buying bitcoin with local currency.
- **Lead Developer, Safariblocks** (Aug 2022 – Jul 2023). Led development of the Jasiri Protocol on Algorand, a micropayments system meant to free up capital locked in real-world assets and commodities.
- **Blockchain Developer, Reach Platform** (Apr 2022 – May 2023). Smart contracts in Reach, a language that compiles one program for several blockchains.
- **Bancassurance Specialist, KCB Bank Group** (May 2022 – Aug 2022). Sold insurance products through the bank.

## Projects

- [AlgoCity](https://algocity.pentacostai.com): A city-trading game for up to four players on Algorand. If a player steps away, a labelled bot holds their seat, and AI agents can play too. Hosting a table costs one USDC payment over x402.
- [Goanna Lending Platform](https://lending.algoanna.com): Members of the Goanna DAO borrow Algo here at low interest. It handles over $10,000 in loans a month.
- [DEFI P2P](https://www.defi-p2p.com/): Peer-to-peer lending on Algorand. Lenders fund borrowers directly through smart contracts.
- [Shufl Marketplace](https://shufl.app/): An Algorand marketplace where people list, buy and auction NFTs.
- [Mutant vs Zombies Battles](https://battle.algoanna.com/): A Goanna DAO game. Players stake their MvZ NFTs for a chance to win GOANNA tokens.
- **Kenya Renal Registry** (2025 – 2026): A national registry for kidney patients, with clinical decision support based on WHO SMART Guidelines. Web (Next.js), mobile (Expo) and desktop (Electron) apps share an AWS Amplify backend. Diagnoses and lab results are coded in ICD-11 and LOINC so they map onto FHIR.
- **Kidney guidelines to WHO SMART** (2026): Turning the Kenya National Kidney Guidelines 2026 into a WHO SMART Digital Adaptation Kit, the structured form a guideline takes before it becomes software. I wrote a 17-part method guide and a tool that traces each WHO rule back to the document it came from. An AI-assisted pipeline pulls decision tables and care pathways out of each chapter for review against the source.
- **DEFI-P2P** (2025): Peer-to-peer lending on Algorand, which I built on my own. It runs on AlgoKit contracts, a Next.js frontend and Supabase, and CI deploys the contracts to TestNet. Asset details that rarely change are cached separately from live balances, and requests are queued by priority so the dashboard loads what's on screen first.
- **Table Banking model** (2025): A white paper on the maths behind chamas, community savings-and-credit groups. It sets rules for how much each member can borrow and how profit is shared (30% by savings, 70% by interest paid). I tested the model in Python against one group's real ledger.
- **Algox402 SDK** (2025): An SDK for paying per request with x402 on Algorand. It covers the buyer, seller and facilitator roles and includes Express middleware with PostgreSQL storage.
- **SmartSeat Ticketing** (2022 – 2023): NFT event tickets on Algorand, which I built with one other engineer.
- **Digital Health Ecosystem Explorer** (2026): An interactive version of WHO's diagram of the digital health ecosystem. It shows health workers and developers where a Digital Adaptation Kit fits.
- **Research-to-Skill Generator** (2026): Turns research notes into Agent Skills that Claude Code, Codex and GitHub Copilot can all load, with a small validator that needs no dependencies.

## Skills

- Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, SQL
- Backend: Node.js, Express, REST APIs, PostgreSQL, Redis, Supabase, Firebase / Firestore, Background workers
- Digital assets: Algorand (AlgoKit, Algorand Python, PyTeal), Smart contracts, Reach, x402 payments, USDC settlement, Escrow and LogicSig flows, Lending protocols
- Digital health: HL7 FHIR, WHO SMART Guidelines, Digital Adaptation Kits (DAK), BPMN, ICD-11 / LOINC
- Frontend & apps: React, Next.js, Tailwind CSS, Svelte, React Native / Expo, Electron
- Cloud & delivery: AWS (EC2, Amplify, Secrets Manager), Vercel, Fly.io, Google App Engine, Docker, GitHub Actions
- Testing: Jest, Playwright, pytest, Integration tests, Architecture reviews
- AI tooling: LLM extraction pipelines, Claude Code and agent skills, Multi-agent workflows, Knowledge graphs

## Education

- Tourism Management, United States International University (2013 – 2017)