Smart Dražby

Electronic auctions follow strict rules. Each bidder has to be reliably identified, the deposit has to arrive on time, every bid has to be provable, and an official record of the auction has to exist once it ends. Without a good platform, that means paperwork for bidders and manual work for the auctioneer.

Smart Dražby wanted to move the whole process online so that anyone could join an auction within minutes — without the auctioneer having to match payments or chase anything by hand.

We built the whole journey for bidders and auctioneers as one product — from sign-up to the winning bid.

• Bank iD verificationBidders verify themselves with their bank identity. Their verified name, personal ID number, address and bank account fill the profile automatically, and the administrator also sees the AML check.
• Sign-up for every participantIndividuals, sole traders, companies, spouses' joint property and co-ownership each have their own flow. Company details load from the ARES business register.
• Deposits without manual matchingEach registration gets its own payment reference and a QR payment. The system checks the bank account every minute and confirms paid deposits on its own.
• Live auction roomEveryone sees bids in real time. A late bid extends the auction so that at least 3 minutes remain after it — nobody wins in the last second.
• Auction recordEvery bid attempt is logged with its time and outcome. When the auction ends, the system generates the official electronic auction record as a PDF, as the regulation requires.
• Admin for auctioneersCreating and approving auctions, managing registrations and deposits, 19 automatic emails from reminders to results, and test auctions that schedule themselves.

We have been developing and running the platform since May 2024 — design, code and infrastructure.

• Next.js frontendNext.js and React with TypeScript, typed GraphQL queries and an interface built from shared components — on mobile and desktop.
• NestJS GraphQL APIA NestJS backend on PostgreSQL. Bids reach the auction room live through GraphQL subscriptions, and scheduled jobs keep track of deposits and running auctions.
• AWS as codeThe whole environment is described in Terraform: separate staging and production, containers on ECS, an RDS database with daily backups and CloudFront in front of the website and the API.
• Safe deploymentsGitLab CI builds each new version, runs the database migrations and deploys it. Sentry watches for errors, PostHog for user behaviour.