How Alipay’s “Mantiantianxing” Platform Boosts Development and Operations Efficiency

Preface

This article is part of the "Elephant Turnaround – Alipay Funds Technology Delivery Efficiency" series, authored by Zhu Dongyong (Daofeng) and Dai Wei (Daimo).

Problem Statement

When managing multiple product pages and large‑scale fine‑grained operation and投放 demands, teams face:

High R&D effort for each operation request, leading to siloed, chimney‑style development and low developer satisfaction.

Operations cannot be self‑served; technical staff spend excessive time on configuration.

Cross‑platform configuration risks cause poor experience and heavy complaints from business owners.

The "Mantiantianxing" platform aims to address these issues.

Background

Over the past three years, Alipay Funds Technology launched many innovative products (e.g., Xiahebao, merchant transfers). Each innovation required extensive front‑end (Mini‑program, H5, industry solutions) and back‑end effort, making innovation costly and risky.

Two development stages emerged: rapid initial construction and fine‑grained operational growth.

Solution Overview

The platform unifies construction, operation, and feedback into a single workflow, providing a one‑stop, fine‑grained operation platform.

Key Design Principles

Extensibility : Clear domain model layers and boundaries to support pages, modules, plans, content, and strategies.

Reusability : Component‑based services and standardized interfaces enable sharing across scenarios.

High Stability : High‑availability architecture, real‑time monitoring, fault recovery, and backup ensure reliable service.

Exceptional Experience : Friendly UI, precise data analysis, intelligent recommendation, and personalization improve user satisfaction.

Domain Model

Page : Composed of many modules.

Module : Smallest unit for operation and投放.

Page Plan : Different module combinations for variants (e.g., general vs. senior version).

Module Plan : Variant content for different audiences.

Strategy Constraint : Rules governing when, where, and to whom content is shown, including fatigue control, experiments, and algorithmic ordering.

System Architecture

The architecture follows a decentralized approach with both centralized and near‑edge integration options.

Decentralization : Core recommendation aggregates all strategy capabilities; businesses can call a centralized RPC or embed a near‑edge SDK.

Zero Backend Development : Front‑end directly invokes a single interface; back‑end services are optional.

Operation‑Runtime Separation : Configuration (operation time) is published separately from execution (runtime), isolating failures.

Construction Flow

Three steps: design, configure, and invoke. Designers define data structures (e.g., using Ant Group’s Flash‑Butter protocol), operators configure content and rules, and developers call a minimal API.

Technical Risks & Mitigations

Massive traffic handled by decentralization and near‑edge SDK.

Performance bottlenecks from rule‑engine calculations solved by migrating to a custom DB.

Operational cost reduced through self‑service configuration, visual preview, and multi‑environment self‑check.

Efficiency Gains

Development Efficiency

Back‑end developers are freed from routine tasks; front‑end focuses on reusable components and templates, while operators instantiate scenarios without code changes.

Operation Efficiency

Operators use a WYSIWYG configuration page, set content, timing, audience, and fatigue rules, and publish with one‑click gray‑release pipelines.

Data‑Intelligence Efficiency

Unified online/offline data enables performance feedback; algorithmic recommendation can be plugged in to enhance personalized display.

Stage Summary

In three years, the platform achieved strong user adoption, rapid growth in operation frequency, and continuous capability evolution.

Innovations

AIGC content generation for operator‑friendly material creation.

Rapid multilingual support via configuration without code changes.

Best Practices

Business‑driven growth: operators’ feedback drives platform enhancements.

Zero‑research backend: rapid prototyping without back‑end coding.

Configurable, reusable page building enables fast market entry.

For more details, see the linked articles:

Elephant Turnaround – Platform Architecture Embracing Business Innovation

Elephant Turnaround: Alipay Funds Technology Serverless Efficiency Summary