Component

rpc, transports

Describe the feature you would like

I’d like to propose a feature that could enhance the robustness of applications using alloy by implementing a built-in fallback mechanism for the http transport layer. This would help manage scenarios where the primary RPC provider is unavailable, improving reliability without requiring developers to implement custom in-app solutions or gateways.

I see 2 main benefits with such design:

• "zero-cost" reliability: by automatically switching to a fallback provider, the app availability increases (while users simply need to inform an extra rpc url when initializing the provider).
• better dev-ex: a built-in solution reduces development time for devs that would otherwise implement custom mechanisms + ensures consistency across apps.

Because of that i thought of implementing a new http transport to support multiple clients and potentially multiple request orchestration modes (although we could keep it simple and only use it as a fallback). Here the proposed impl:

pub struct HttpMultiClient<T> {
   primary: Http<T>,
   fallback: Http<T>,
   mode: MultiClientMode
}

pub enum MultiClientMode {
   Fallback,
   Fastest
}

impl<T> Service<RequestPacket> for HttpMultiClient<T> {
    type Response = ResponsePacket;
    type Error = TransportError;
    type Future = TransportFut<'static>;

    #[inline]
    fn poll_ready(&mut self, _cx: &mut task::Context<'_>) -> task::Poll<Result<(), Self::Error>> {
        task::Poll::Ready(Ok(()))
    }

    #[inline]
    fn call(&mut self, req: RequestPacket) -> Self::Future {
        match self.mode {
          MultiClientMode::Fallback => self.fallback_request(req) // todo
          MultiClientMode::Fastest => self.fastest_request(req)  // todo
       }
    }
}

then we could enhance the ProviderBuilder so that users would simply do something like:

//! Example of creating an HTTP provider using the `on_multi_http` method on the `ProviderBuilder`.

use alloy::providers::{Provider, ProviderBuilder};
use eyre::Result;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> eyre::Result<()> {
    // Set up the HTTP transport which is consumed by the RPC client.
    let primary = "https://eth.merkle.io".parse()?;
    let fallback = "https://eth.llamarpc.com".parse()?;

    // Create a provider with the HTTP transport with fallback using the `reqwest` crate.
    let provider = ProviderBuilder::new().on_multi_http(primary, fallback, MultiClientMode::Fallback);

    Ok(())
}

• do you think that this approach is sound?
• do you foresee any potential challenges or limitations that i should consider?

I am eager to implement it myself if you guys think that it is a good idea, but design validation would be appreciated.
Thanks!