Serverless NFT Marketplace Backend, Firebase Cloud Functions
A multi-chain token launchpad
Overview
The serverless backend powering the launchpad’s NFT marketplace, implemented as a suite of Firebase Cloud Functions. It handles users, collections, NFTs, transactions, ranking, events, and notifications, and bridges marketplace data to search, activity feeds, email, and the Kadena on-chain layer.
The Challenge
An NFT marketplace needs reactive, event-driven backend logic, keeping search indexes fresh, recording transactions, ranking listings, generating user identities, and confirming on-chain activity, without operating a long-running server. Firebase Functions provide that elasticity while staying tightly coupled to Firestore data.
What We Built
A functions codebase (Node 20) split by domain into modules: user.js, collections.js, nft.js, transaction.js, ranking.js, events.js, and emails.js, plus shared libs. It integrates algoliasearch to keep marketplace listings searchable, getstream for activity/notification feeds, mailgun-js for transactional email, friendly-username-generator for user handles, file-type and form-data for media handling via Firebase Storage, and pact-lang-api to interact with the Kadena smart contracts. integrify wires Firestore document triggers to keep denormalized data consistent. The repo includes Firestore/Storage emulator configuration (firebase.json) and security-rule drafts.
Technologies & Approach
Firebase Cloud Functions over Firestore provide the event-driven, autoscaling backbone; firebase-admin handles privileged data access. External services (Algolia, GetStream, Mailgun) are integrated as managed building blocks, while pact-lang-api connects marketplace state to on-chain transactions on Kadena. Local development is supported through the Firebase emulator suite.
Outcome / Impact
Delivered a maintainable, domain-partitioned serverless backend that powered marketplace search, feeds, notifications, and on-chain-aware transaction handling, actively maintained across multiple years.
Capabilities Demonstrated
- Building event-driven serverless backends on Firebase/Firestore
- Integrating Algolia search, GetStream feeds, and Mailgun email
- Modeling NFT, collection, transaction, and ranking domains
- Bridging marketplace data to Kadena via the Pact API
- Keeping denormalized data consistent with Firestore triggers