What's the difference between DERP & RPCh.

05 Jan 2023, 15:01

What's the difference between DERP & RPCh? Some people have shown some confusion between DERP and RPCh, so we thought we'd take the time to explain the difference. tl;dr - DERP shows the problem with your wallet and RPC providers, RPCh provides the solution 🟡 DERP - DERP is a tool that replicates the functionality of your regular RPC provider but makes every RPC call visible to you, along with the service that requested it! How does DERP work? When you open your wallet, it uses an RPC provider to request basic information such as your token balance. If you then use a (d)app like the Uniswap, its UI will start making calls to various RPC endpoints. These calls can and often do expose massive amounts of data about you, including links between your different Metamask addresses, your IP address, device information and almost every interaction you have with a web3 service. By connecting your wallet with DERP, you will see the actual calls and what information it exposes to RPC providers. DERP tool doesn’t provide any privacy, it is only for educational purposes. 🟡 RPCh - In web3, almost every transaction relies on infrastructure provided by closed-source, centralized infrastructure providers like Infura/Alchemy who you simply have to trust not to misuse your data. Even if these providers are honest, it’s still a huge privacy and security risk to handle vital metadata like IP addresses in this way. How does RPCh work? RPCh prevents this leak by routing requests and responses via the HOPR network. The difference! In short, the difference between DERP & RPCh is that DERP is a monitoring tool which shows what metadata you're leaking to your default RPC provider and when you are connected to a specific service. In contrast, RPCh is a product which will help you to prevent leaking your metadata from RPC providers or specific services. In even shorter terms: DERP shows the problem, while RPCh is the solution.