Blockchain System Design
Blockchain System Design — Build decentralized solutions to real-world problems (ProofChain & ChainCure).
Figure out where boundaries lie, when to store off-chain, and how to model trust. We'll dissect the real architecture of Uniswap, ProofChain, and Socio3.
ProofChain
Production-grade proof-of-existence system: file hashing on the frontend, IPFS storage, on-chain hash registry, event indexing, hybrid architecture.
Architecture Thinking
Actor modeling, boundaries, and why blockchain is not a database.
Actor modeling — who does what
Permissions, trust models, and multi-signature bounds.
Blockchain is NOT your database — hybrid design rules
Crucial system design architectures: ProofChain, Firebase caching, IPFS hashing, event indexing, and resolving query issues.
What goes on-chain vs off-chain
Proofs vs data. Gas optimization boundaries.
Data Flow Design
Tracing the lifecycles of on-chain and off-chain data flows.
How data moves through hybrid systems
Dissecting the journey of an uploaded image through standard web servers, IPFS, the blockchain log registry, and graph indexers.
Event-driven architecture in Web3
How user actions trigger contract events that act as asynchronous pipelines to update off-chain indexers and notification caches.
How Uniswap actually works — AMM system design
Deep dive into the Automated Market Maker (AMM) system architecture, the constant product formula (x * y = k), liquidity pool states, and arbitrage boundaries.
Scalability Thinking
Identify performance bottlenecks and cache data correctly in distributed environments.
Why direct RPC queries die at scale
Socio3 V1 scaling autopsy: how loading feeds via JSON-RPC works at 10 posts, degrades at 1000, and freezes browsers at 10000.
Why Redis exists in Web3 systems
How direct IPFS gateway lookups cause massive latencies, and why caching immutable CIDs in Redis drops feed render times to 80ms.
Why The Graph exists — indexing deep dive
EVM storage contains no ORDER BY or query features. How to compile smart contract events into instantly queryable GraphQL endpoints.
Production Infrastructure
Backends, API gateways, proxying, rate-limiting, and defensive structures.
Why backends exist in Web3 — API gateway design
Debunking the 'blockchain is my backend' myth. Exposing Express proxy gateways to secure Pinata keys and run off-chain validations.
Rate limiting and abuse prevention
Designing gas faucets that prevent Sybil attacks. Why native gas payouts must be rate-limited and routed strictly to EOA addresses.
Architecture Autopsies
Dissecting the lifecycle transformations of five production dApps.
ChainElect autopsy — gas limits and storage bottlenecks
A postmortem on ChainElect: how a naive smart contract architecture hit the Block Gas Limit, how on-chain storage traversals fail, and how to pack slots for efficiency.
Socio3 autopsy — from naive RPC to decoupled production stack
A postmortem on Socio3: tracing how direct JSON-RPC queries froze the browser at 1,000 posts, and how we rebuilt it using Privy, ERC-4337, The Graph, and Redis.
ChainCure autopsy — role permissions and trust boundaries
A postmortem on ChainCure: how a single compromised key halted a pharmaceutical supply chain, and how to design multi-signature role constraints.