Pros and Cons of Running a Polygon Node as an Arbitrage Trader

Thoughts on running a polygon node after 2 months

Google Cloud console - Compute Engine

Summary

• Running your polygon node gives you much faster responses, no rate limits, and unlimited number of requests.
• Cost of running a node is $470/month.
• It’s possible to make profits without running a node.

I’ve been doing some flashloan arbitrage trades for the last four months, the first 2 months using alchemy(an Ethereum node API service), and the last 2 months running a polygon node. From these trades, I will share some thoughts on the pros and cons of running a polygon node as an arbitrage trader.

Who should run a polygon node?

Probably you should run a node if your trade execution speed is important for your *MEV strategy such as arbitrage trades, front-running, NFT minting, etc.

If you’re not sure about MEV, here is a good overview of MEV from the official Ethereum website.