
#TECHNICAL
Edge Authentication: Why I Ditched Traditional Sessions for Jose
•5 min read
# Scaling Auth to the Edge\n\nTraditional session-based authentication requires a database hit for every single request. This is a latency killer. For my portfolio, I moved the security logic to the network edge.\n\n## Why Jose?\n`jose` is a lightweight, zero-dependency library that works perfectly in Next.js Middleware. It allows us to verify JWTs in secure cookies before the request even reaches our server.\n\n## The DevOps Benefit\nBy keeping auth stateless, we eliminate the need for session-store synchronization across regions, making the system globally scalable by default.