Private Traps 🔒

The default for a trap is to be public (i.e. private_trap = false in your drosera.toml). In this configuration, the only operators who can optin to your trap and run it are protocol-level operators.

Protocol-Level Operators

These operators are run by entities hand-picked by the Drosera team that are known and respected node runners in the blockchain space. When you create a trap, automatically, there will already be a set of operators available that are professionally managed with high uptime, as you would expect at an enterprise level.

If your trap is public, all of these protocol-level operators have the ability to optin and run your trap. However, if you set your trap to private (private_trap = true), then none of these protocol-level operators will be able to optin unless you explicitly add their operator address to the trap's whitelist.

Trap-Level Operators

For some, only protocol-level operators will be sufficent. Others may want to exclusively run their own infrastructure, or let one of their friends (who loves running nodes but is not a protocol-level whitelisted operator) participate in monitoring their trap. In this case, they can simply add the address of the desired operator to the trap's whitelist and update the trap on-chain. Then the non-protocol-level whitelisted operator will be able to optin.

	protocol-level operators	trap-level operators
Trap is public	All protocol-level operators can optin to the trap	Can only optin if they are explicitly added to the trap whitelist
Trap is private	Can only optin if they are explicitly added to the trap whitelist	Can only optin if they are explicitly added to the trap whitelist

This allows flexible control for who is allowed to run your trap. You can have plug and play, professionally run operators, or exclusively run your own operators, or utilize some of both. The choice is yours.