[Spike] broker -- hand rolled vs as a service

[twblack88]

Chainflip has a thing --poorly named-- called a broker that does (@0xean fills in sophsticated details)

we should probably run our own but there are contingencies we'll need:

• a cycling amount of FLIP
• extra protections on the endpoint. there are two attack vectors we need to account for and secure against.

[CumpsD]

Some extra info on rolling your own broker:

• You need to run chainflip-node (preferably load balance if one goes down, or if you want to do rolling updates)
• You need to run chainflip-broker-api (same deal, 2 separate)
• Need to pay attention to the Chainflip Discord to stay up to date and follow the update procedures to keep everything working.
• Cycling amount of FLIP you can mostly ignore, tx cost is so low it lasts a really long time. Add in like 20 FLIP to start and set a monitor on it
• You indeed need to put something like nginx/reverse proxy in front of it to block certain RPC calls (like broker_withdraw_fees to avoid somebody just claiming all your broker rewards to their address)
• Not going to happen quickly, but a user can adjust the commission bps on a call to your broker to not pay any. But if they go that length, they might as well swap somewhere else.
• You need to protect your broker keys which are on the server too.

Info about the Broker as a Service (BaaS):

• Docs: https://docs.chainflip-broker.io/use-cases/
• Main use cases are to make life easier by:
  • Not having to run 2 nodes
  • Not having to run 2 broker apis
  • Not having to pay attention to the Discord/upgrades
  • Not having to care about the FLIP needed (besides a little FLIP to redeem your broker rewards)
  • Have all RPC calls blocked besides the one needed to start a swap
  • Setting a minimum commission bps, which is enforced no matter what users do
  • You hold your own keys, BaaS is fully non-custodial, your keys are used to redeem your rewards.
  • Additional, an extra REST API is provided to make developer life even more easier: https://chainflip-broker.io/docs/ui/index.html
  • Multiple ways to integrate (Chainflip SDK, Swapkit SDK, BaaS REST API)
• And all of this for just 0.05% fee per swap :) https://docs.chainflip-broker.io/resources/pricing/
• And you're in good hands and good company!