I've watched (and built) enough on-chain trading bots to know that the ones that fail rarely blow up spectacularly — they leak. Here are five quiet failure modes I've seen over and over in RWA bot development, and how to handle each one.
Acting on stale reference data
The classic. The on-chain price looks dislocated, but the off-chain reference is just lagging, so the "opportunity" vanishes the moment you enter. Handle it: only trade when your reference quote is confirmed fresh — a staleness flag (like the one HyperBasis provides) makes this a one-line check.
Ignoring session gaps
Overnight and during holidays, the reference market is closed but the perp keeps trading. Spreads widen for real, and naive mean-reversion logic gets run over. Handle it: make your strategy session-aware, and widen your thresholds when the reference market is shut.
