Real-time collaboration

1) What is "real-time collaboration"

Real-time collaboration (RTC) is the ability of network participants to simultaneously see, edit and consistently execute actions (bets/spins, tournament moderation, switching offers, switching payment routes, KYC solutions, streaming broadcasts), while maintaining low latency, seamless history and data security between many organizations and regions.

2) Key real-time scenarios for iGaming

Live content: WebRTC/RTMP studio streams, synchronization of bets and round results, instant leaderboards.
Real-time marketing orchestration: enabling/disabling offers, missions, banners, tournament rules through feature flags and rule-engine without release.
Payment transactions: authorization/chargeback status, PSP/APM cuts, instant cut-over.
KYC/AML moderation: collaborative queues, assignment of tickets, solutions in a couple of clicks, shared comments.
War-room and incidents: single p95/error dashboards, team actions (traffic rooting, transfer to backup).
Joint analytics: co-editing panels, live showcases of events (bets/spins/deposits).
Communities/streams: synchronous draws, chat missions, "pressing the red button" (stop campaign, stop provider).

3) Architectural foundation

3. 1 Transport and Real Time

WebRTC (SRTP/QUIC) for audio/video/data channels; SFU for fan-out, MCU for conference mixing.
WebSocket/HTTP-2/3 for signaling, chats, leaderboards and teams.
QUIC: fast connection establishment, congestion control, resistance to packet loss.
QoS/prioritization: media streams> command events> metrics.
Edge/CDN: close PoP to reduce RTT; caching and near-edge computing.

3. 2 Consistency and status

CRDT/OT for co-editing (tournament rules, offers, dashboards).
Sagas and idempotency for business transactions (rewards, write-offs).
CAP compromises: strong consistency for money/balance sheets, eventual for storefronts/chats.
Sticky-routing where a local state (live-table) is required, otherwise stateless.

3. 3 Event bus

Доменные топики: `spin/bet`, `round_start/result`, `deposit/withdrawal`, `kyc_status`, `fraud_signal`, `reward_granted`, `feature_toggle`.
Party keys: 'playerId', 'tableId', 'campaignId', 'operatorId'.
SLA delivery and lag consumers as SLI; exactly-once in business sense with key deduplication.

3. 4 Service-mesh and routing

mTLS, outlier-ejection, circuit-breaker, retries with jitter, per-tenant limits.
GSLB/Anycast for incoming points; policy-routing by geo/latency/compliance.

4) Topologies and patterns

4. 1 Live streams and tables

Studios → SFU layer (edge PoP) → CDN → clients.
Time-sync: NTP/PTP for fair synchronization of bets and results.
Fast health-flip between SFU/CDN, targeted disconnection of problem nodes.

4. 2 Co-edits

WebSocket-bus + CRDT for tournament/offers/dashboards rules.
Optimistic updates with subsequent convergence and change log.

4. 3 Real-time payment perimeter

Event-outbox from orchestrator, warm channels to PSP, cut-over ≤ 60-90 c.
Token Bucket on outgoing calls so as not to drop the PSP at peak.
Fail-open/closed strategies by error types (non-critical features vs money).

4. 4 War-room and incidents

A single trace-id and action buttons (freeze the offer, disable the provider, transfer the GSLB weight).
Joint notes and chats, SLO/error budget flashing lights, logbook (WORM).

5) Security and access models

Zero Trust: short-lived tokens, mTLS, JWS/HMAC S2S, device binding/ASN.
Microsegmentation: vendor zones (studios, PSP, KYC), financial circuit isolation.
PII minimization: tokens instead of personal data, separate safe-storage, DPIA/DPA.
RBAC/ABAC: real-time rights (who can press the stop button, change limits).
Audit: unchangeable logs of actions (who/when/what), SLA of issuing a trace packet.

6) Burst and overload management

Backpressure: queues in front of "fragile" upstream, degradation of non-key features.
Rate limiting at the level of gateways and mesh policies; leaky/token bucket.
Autoscale by composite signals (RPS, p95, lag, queue depth).
A/B throttling: dosing features by segment/region to control risks.

7) Observability and SLO

• Live video: e2e delay ≤ 300-800 ms, packet loss ≤ 0.5-1%.
• Critical APIs: login p95 ≤ 300-500 ms; deposit p95 ≤ 1.5-2.0 s; rate p95 ≤ 150-250 ms.
• Event bus: lag p95 ≤ 200-500 ms, ≥ delivery 99.9%.
• Co-edit/chats: update latency ≤ 150-300 ms.
• Coverage tracking ≥ 95% for critical paths; correlation L3↔L7.
• War-room-dashboards: regions, providers, PSP/KYC, content, error budget.

8) Economy real-time (Cost-to-Serve)

Cost per stream (bitrate × min) and per rps (API/bus), the price of "one cut-over."

Effect of p95/errors on CR deposit/rate → GGR/margin.
Headroom for peaks (30-50%) and savings strategy (turning off unnecessary nodes outside the peaks).

9) Antipatterns

SPOF gateway or single SFU/CDN without N + 1 and health-flip.
Retrays without limits → "storm" and double transactions/rewards.
Global locks in co-editor → friezes, loss of action.
Real-time prod/stage mixing; live PD test.
Lack of time-sync → disputes over the "honesty" of rounds/cuts.
Feature without flags: every fix = release, no instant rollback.
PII "walks" between participants without tokenization and egress control.

10) RTC Implementation Checklist

1. Define real-time domains (live, offers, payments, KYC, war-room) and their SLO.
2. Expand the transport: WebRTC/SFU/CDN, WebSocket gateways, QUIC, time-sync.
3. Enter CRDT/OT for co-editor; sagas and idempotency for transactions.
4. Configure the event bus and rule-engine, feature flags and progressive delivery.
5. Enable Zero Trust, RBAC/ABAC, tokenization, DPIA/DPA.
6. Collect observability: trails, metrics, profiling, war-room procedures.
7. Prepare DR/chaos scenarios: SFU/PSP/KYC/provider drop, cut-over ≤ 90 s.
8. Connect with the economy: Cost-to-Serve, peak window budget, co-funding with partners.
9. Capture artifact patterns: playbooks, SLO list, RACI, audit-trail.

11) Artifact patterns (short)

Runbook Live-tables/SFU: thresholds, shifts, flip buttons, tests.
Incident Playbook: contacts, thresholds, escalations, RCA format.
Feature Toggle Sheet: flags, regions, percentages, stop conditions.
Data Sharing Matrix: fields, purpose, legal framework, shelf life.
Partner SLO Card: SLI, credits/penalties, SLAs per trace package.

12) Evolution Roadmap

v1 (Foundation): WebSocket/RTMP, base flags, manual war-room.
v2 (Integration): WebRTC/SFU on edge, service-mesh policies, event bus, co-edit (CRDT).
v3 (Automation): SLO autoscale, rule-engine, adaptive bit rate/SLI routing.
v4 (Networked Governance): inter-partner RTC processes, collaborative PoPs, ML predictive hints.

Brief summary

Real-time is not only video and chat, it is end-to-end synchronization of decisions and actions throughout the network: transport (WebRTC/QUIC), events and consistency (CRDT/sagas), security (Zero Trust), observability and SLO, plus readiness for failures. With this architecture, the ecosystem responds quickly to peaks and incidents, scales without downtime, and gives the player a here-and-now experience in a predictable economy.