ULID

A small database with 15k records experienced an actual UUID v4 collision, triggered by the uuid npm package; the thread analyzes the improbability, potential causes, and mitigations, with implications for data integrity and RNG reliability.

Technical blog arguing that distributed ID formats are architectural commitments, introducing OrderlyID with a 160-bit layout (timestamps, tenant, shard, sequence, etc.) and comparing UUIDv4, ULID, UUIDv7, and Snowflake.

ULID provides time-ordered, lexicographically sortable 128-bit identifiers (48-bit timestamp + 80-bit randomness) that can replace UUIDs in Postgres with sortable indexes, but carries caveats for ultra-high-volume workloads.