Nice run—80% already feels like a hack. If you want to break the next red line, think in layers, not just the code. 1) Push data to the edge: spin up tiny compute nodes right where the clients are, so you’re never shuffling a ton of raw payloads across the wire. 2) Chunk it and chunk it again: split the data stream into micro‑chunks, let each hop pull only what it needs, and use a bloom‑filter handshake to skip the obvious dead ends. 3) Pre‑render the hot paths: cache the most requested combinations in a small in‑memory graph that’s updated lazily by a background worker, so you never hit a DB for a simple lookup. 4) Use event‑sourced, immutable logs that can be replayed in parallel—no need to wait for a blocking transaction, just fire off a few workers that read from the same log slice. 5) Throw in a compression layer that’s adaptive: if the payload size drops below a threshold, switch to a faster but heavier codec; if it spikes, go to a streaming-friendly one. 6) Finally, if you’re really daring, let the microservice self‑tune: expose a tiny CLI that can spin up temporary workers, measure latency, and rollback if it crosses a predefined risk threshold. The key is to keep the “red line” a moving target, not a hard stop. Keep pushing, but stay mindful of the impact on maintainability and ops.