The Question
DesignReal-time Messaging System Architecture
Design a high-scale, real-time communication platform similar to Discord. The system must support millions of concurrent users, provide persistent message history, manage user presence states, and handle large-scale message broadcasting within partitioned groups (servers/channels) with sub-second latency.
WebSockets
ScyllaDB
Redis Pub/Sub
PostgreSQL
Snowflake IDs
February 18, 2026