Don't worry about performance too early though - it's more important to get the design right, and "right" in this case means using the database the way a database is meant to be used, as a transactional system.

Trailblazer offers you a new, more intuitive file layout in applications.

Instead of grouping by technology, classes and views are structured by concept, and then by technology. A concept can relate to a model, or can be a completely abstract concern such as invoicing.

Concepts over Technology

While Trailblazer offers you abstraction layers for all aspects of Ruby On Rails, it does not missionize you. Wherever you want, you may fall back to the "Rails Way" with fat models, monolithic controllers, global helpers, etc. This is not a bad thing, but allows you to step-wise introduce Trailblazer's encapsulation in your app without having to rewrite it.