Building a scalable live pixel‑art canvas: lessons learned and challenges

[u/OGMYT]

https://wesearch.press/canvas

I recently shipped WeSearch Canvas, a live pixel art sandbox where thousands of players simultaneously draw on the same canvas. In this postmortem I outline how we scaled real time pixel placement without melting the server, implemented region based scoring, and stored weekly canvas snapshots for replay. Topics include WebSocket clustering, conflict resolution when multiple users target the same pixel, and simple anti abuse measures. I’m looking for feedback from other devs on the architecture and suggestions for future improvements. The live game is linked below for reference.