Design patterns, failure modes, and real operational trade-offs in distributed systems -- from payment authorization infrastructure.
2026
Apr
Designing Rate Limiters for Payment Systems
distributed-systems
838 words
How to build rate limiters that protect authorization infrastructure without rejecting legitimate traffic. Token bucket math, sliding window trade-offs, and the distributed coordination problem.
Mar
Consistent Hashing in Distributed Caches
distributed-systems
229 words
Why naive modular hashing breaks when nodes join or leave, and how consistent hashing fixes it.
Feb
Why UUIDs Matter for Idempotency
payments
188 words
Using UUID v7 as idempotency keys in payment authorization to prevent duplicate processing.