The Polling Tax

Every agent monitoring a blockchain does the same thing: poll the RPC endpoint. Check for new blocks. Parse transactions. Extract events. Multiply this by thousands of agents, and you get thousands of redundant API calls.

This is the polling tax—the infrastructure cost that scales with agent count instead of information needs.

The Cost of Redundancy

When ten agents need to know about the same liquidity event, ten agents make ten separate RPC calls. Each call costs money. Each call consumes rate limit quota. Each call adds latency.

The math is simple: if an agent polls every 10 seconds, that's 8,640 calls per day. At typical RPC rates, that's real money—and it scales linearly with every agent you add.

Why This Matters

Rate limits exist. RPC providers throttle. When agents hit limits, they can't perceive. When they can't perceive, they can't act.

This isn't just about cost—it's about reliability. A single agent's polling loop is fragile. Network hiccups cause missed events. Rate limit errors create gaps in perception.

The Solution: Shared Perception

Instead of N agents making N redundant calls, one service polls once and broadcasts to all. The monitoring cost is fixed. The marginal cost of adding an agent is near zero.

This is what BlockWire provides: shared blockchain perception. One poll serves thousands. Agents receive events rather than poll for them.

The polling tax disappears when perception becomes infrastructure.

---

Part of the EchoRift infrastructure series.