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Chain Technical Architecture Overview

Param avatar
Written by Param
Updated this week

This document provides an overview of Chain's technical architecture, with a focus on infrastructure, scalability, security, and system resiliency. It is intended for enterprise technology stakeholders evaluating Chain in the sales process.

1. Cloud Infrastructure & Platform

Chain is fully deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our infrastructure leverages AWS-native, battle-tested services to ensure scalability, reliability, and security. Our platform is architected using a serverless-first model, allowing us to dynamically scale workloads without manual provisioning.

Primary Services

  • AWS Lambda: All business logic is built as microservices running on Lambda functions for autoscaling and low-latency compute.

  • API Gateway: Handles all inbound HTTP requests, with full support for authentication, throttling, and observability.

  • Amazon EventBridge: Central event bus for inter-service communication; supports real-time, decoupled processing.

  • Amazon SQS: Queued communication between services ensures resilience, retries, and fault tolerance.

  • Amazon Kinesis: Powers real-time data pipelines and ingestion with high throughput.

  • Amazon DynamoDB: Used for ultra-low-latency, high-availability key-value and document-based workloads. Provides instant scaling and is fully managed with built-in replication, encryption, and backup features.

  • Amazon AuroraDB: Used for an added cache layer to provide low-latency client-side read workloads.

These services operate under a fully serverless model, enabling Chain to elastically scale based on demand spikes, with zero-downtime deployments and auto-healing capabilities.


2. Database & Caching Layer

While our core processing layer is serverless, Chain’s data layer includes purposefully designed persistent and ephemeral storage systems.

Databases

  • Amazon Aurora (PostgreSQL-compatible): Our primary OLTP store is deployed on EC2 within private VPC subnets. Aurora offers high availability, replication, and snapshot support.

  • Amazon DynamoDB: Supports high-throughput, low-latency use cases such as event tracking, idempotency keys, and metadata lookups. Tables are partitioned by access pattern and provisioned with autoscaling for predictable performance.

  • Partitioned by Service: Each autonomous service manages its own database schema, allowing microservice-level isolation and failure containment.

Security and Networking

  • All Aurora and DynamoDB operations are accessed within private VPCs or IAM-restricted roles.

  • Access is controlled via security groups, IAM policies, and strict service-to-service permission boundaries.

  • Encryption at rest and in transit is enforced using AWS KMS and TLS.


3. Scalability & Performance

Chain is designed for horizontal scalability and high availability:

  • All core services autoscale with traffic volume.

  • Event-driven architecture ensures non-blocking async processing.

  • Read/write workloads are distributed across services, avoiding bottlenecks.

  • Aurora read replicas and caching strategies reduce query latency.

Our system is tested for spikes exceeding 3x current production load without infrastructure tuning.


4. Security & Compliance

Security is integrated at every layer of our platform. Key practices include:

Application Security

  • OAuth2, SAML SSO, and MFA support

  • Role-based and permission-based access control (RBAC)

  • Input validation, rate-limiting, and request tracing

Infrastructure Security

  • All services run in private VPCs

  • IAM roles scoped using least privilege principle

  • Audit logging for all administrative actions

  • CI/CD pipeline includes SAST and DAST scanning

Data Protection

  • Data is encrypted at rest and in transit using AWS KMS and TLS 1.2+

  • Regular database snapshots and automated backups

  • GDPR- and CCPA-aligned data handling practices


5. Monitoring & Observability

We operate with full observability across the platform:

  • CloudWatch + Sentry + PostHog for metrics, logs, and tracing

  • Real-time alerts on latency, errors, and throughput

  • Per-service dashboards and uptime monitoring

  • Audit trails and API usage tracking


6. Resiliency & Fault Isolation

Chain’s architecture emphasizes fault tolerance:

  • Services are loosely coupled and communicate asynchronously

  • Retry and DLQ policies in place for all SQS/Kinesis processors

  • Subsystems can degrade independently, minimizing blast radius

  • Isolated deployments per environment (dev, staging, prod)


7. Deployment & CI/CD

Chain uses an automated CI/CD pipeline to ensure rapid, safe deployments:

  • All code changes go through peer-reviewed PRs and CI validation

  • Daily deployments with versioning and rollback support

  • Canary and staged releases for critical updates


8. System Modularity

Each functional area of Chain (e.g., Booking, Tracking, Messaging) is encapsulated as a self-contained domain service with its own APIs and datastore. This structure allows:

  • Independent scaling and deployment

  • Better team autonomy and testing

  • Clear ownership and fault domain boundaries


Chain’s architecture is built to meet the performance, availability, and security standards expected by enterprise brokerages and logistics platforms. The system scales seamlessly, isolates faults, and protects customer data using AWS best practices. For further information, we are happy to provide deeper documentation or discuss integration-specific concerns.

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