THOUGHTS + NOTES

BLOG

Field notes on backend architecture, distributed systems, delivery tradeoffs, and practical lessons from production work.

AllApiAwsBlockchainCassandraCeleryCoinbaseCryptoDappDistributed SystemDistributed SystemsEidasElasticsearchEvmFapiFintechFixGoGrpcHardhatIbkrInfrastructureInteractive BrokersJavascriptKubernetesMicroservicesMqttMt4Mt5MtlsNodejsOpenbankingPgbouncerPostgresPostgresqlPsd2PythonRmqSmart ContractsTradingXmlZmq
Designing a Fintech Backend: Crypto + Open Banking Under One Roof
BlockchainCoinbaseCryptoDappEidasFapiFintech

Designing a Fintech Backend: Crypto + Open Banking Under One Roof

Over the better part of this year, I’ve been building a platform designed to serve both banks and blockchains through one request pipeline, one ledger, and one compliance engine. If that sounds straightforward, you haven't tried it. The two domains share surface-level primitives (accounts, transactions, balances, identity) and then diverge on literally everything that matters: trust models, settlement finality, regulatory frameworks, and failure modes. This post is the architecture document I wish existed when I started. It covers everything from event sourcing patterns to gas estimation heuristics to why your HSM setup will make or break you. No hand-waving, no "it depends" without explaining what it depends on.

38 MIN READ
Read articlearrow_forward
Coinbase and EVM Payment Integration
BlockchainCoinbaseCryptoDappDistributed SystemDistributed SystemsEvmFintechHardhatSmart Contracts

Coinbase and EVM Payment Integration

If you've ever tried to accept crypto payments in a real web application - not a hackathon demo, not a Medium tutorial copy-paste, an actual production system - you already know the documentation situation is somewhere between "sparse" and "actively hostile." The Coinbase Commerce docs read like they were written by someone who's never had to debug a webhook at 2 AM. The ethers.js examples assume you're building a hello-world dApp, not a payment pipeline that needs to handle underpayments, expired charges, and the occasional user who sends DAI to an ETH address and then emails you about it.

32 MIN READ
Read articlearrow_forward