ethers-super-provider

Used by alt0.io to provide highly reliable and fast chain listening.

How it works

• You supply it with a list of regular providers
• It will frequently benchmark (with getBlockNumber) the providers supplied and rank them by response time. Providers lagging in blocks won't be used.
• Depending on the selected mode, calls are either:
  • spread in cycles between the fastest providers (default)
  • sent to the fastest providers in parallel and the first response is returned (fastest)
• If any call fails or stalls, it is retried on another provider with an exponential backoff.

Installation

npm install ethers-super-provider

Example Usage

import { SuperProvider } from "ethers-super-provider"

import { ethers } from "ethers"

const rpcs = [
  "https://api.mycryptoapi.com/eth",
  "https://cloudflare-eth.com",
  "https://eth-mainnet.public.blastapi.io",
  "https://rpc.ankr.com/eth",
]

const provider = new SuperProvider(rpcs.map((url) => new ethers.providers.JsonRpcProvider(url)))

const blockNumber = await provider.getBlockNumber()
console.log(blockNumber)

API

new SuperProvider(providers: Provider[], chainId: number, options?: SuperProviderOptions)

• providers: Array of providers to use
• chainId: Chain ID to use (default: 1 / eth mainnet)
• options: Options for the super provider

options

• mode: Mode to use for calls. Either spread or parallel. Default: spread
• maxRetries: Maximum number of retries for a call. Default: 3
• benchmarkFrequency: Interval between benchmarks. Default: 200000 (~3 minutes)
• acceptableBlockLag: Maximum number of blocks a provider can lag behind the fastest provider. Default: 0
• benchmarkRuns: Number of runs for each benchmark. Default: 2
• stallTimeout: Timeout for a call to be considered stalled. Default: 4000 (4 seconds)
• maxParallel: Maximum number of parallel calls. Default: 3

Which mode to use?

• if you are not doing very frequent calls and/or want the absolute fastest results, regardless of network use or cost, use parallel which will send the request to many providers in parallel and return the first available response.

• for all other uses (espsecially if you are doing a lot of requests at once) use spread (default) which is more efficient. Limit expensive API calls to a provider. This is also more respectful for public providers as it won't flood them with requests you won't use.

Caveats

• Currently doesn't support subscriptions & listening to events with .on(). PR welcome.
• Doesn't have a concept of quorum and doesn't compare results.
• Lots of untested edge cases.

Credit

Inspiration taken from ethers's FallbackProvider, essential-eth's FallthroughProvider and Chainlist's auto RPC benchmarking.

Used by

• alt0.io

Author

plz follow me on twitter I don't have many followers