Case Study - Minting thousands, saving thousands

Overview

DaChain was among the early startups exploring the potential of NFTs in the sports space, with a focus on digital collectibles linked to Italian football teams. Users could create accounts, purchase packs, and own unique digital assets tied to players and teams.

As the platform grew, technical limitations quickly surfaced. The existing backend was expensive to run, difficult to scale, and tightly coupled to third–party blockchain services, limiting flexibility and performance.

We were brought in to stabilise the platform, reduce operational costs, and regain control over the core technical infrastructure, from backend services to blockchain operations.

Solution

Our first focus was the backend. The existing Java–based system was costly to operate and inefficient under load. We rewrote the entire backend in Kotlin, keeping the same framework while heavily optimising database access, execution paths, and infrastructure configuration.

At the same time, we redesigned the AWS setup from the ground up. Through careful optimisation of services, resource allocation, and database schemas, we significantly reduced monthly infrastructure costs while improving overall system stability.

In parallel, we worked on the blockchain layer. Working closely with the DaChain team, we designed and deployed a custom blockchain setup and smart contract architecture, replacing the previous third–party solution. This gave the team full control over minting logic, timing, and asset creation workflows.

The new setup enabled massive performance improvements. NFT minting operations that previously took tens of minutes could now be executed at scale in seconds. We also handled a full migration of users, wallets, and assets, generating new wallets, minting NFTs on the new chain, and assigning them correctly without user disruption.