Fix /verify and /settle silently 500ing on transient RPC failure

[jUXTAPOSITION1]

Root cause

verifyPayment()'s on-chain reads (authorizationState/balanceOf) and its risk-scan step (scanAddress(), which shares the same RPC client) had no error handling at all. Any transient RPC trouble — a rate limit, a timeout, a non-archive node rejecting a historical query, or no RPC URL configured — threw straight out of verifyPayment(), past the route handler (Express 5 auto-forwards a rejected async handler to errorMiddleware), and became an unrecorded 500.

Since /settle re-runs verifyPayment() internally before ever broadcasting (prepareSettlement → verifyPayment), both endpoints shared this exact fragility.

Because the throw happens before recordVerification/recordSettlement or verifyOutcomesTotal/settleOutcomesTotal are ever reached, the failure was invisible in VAPOR's own /stats too — from a resource server's perspective this is indistinguishable from "the facilitator is down," so it silently falls back to whatever facilitator is next in its chain, and VAPOR never shows a trace the attempt happened at all.

Fix

• Wrap the on-chain state read (getPublicClient + authorizationState/balanceOf) in a try/catch that returns a clean, recorded {isValid: false, invalidReason: "temporarily unable to verify on-chain state (RPC error)"} instead of throwing.
• Wrap the risk-scan step so a scan failure degrades to {isValid: true, payer} with no riskAssessment — which is what verifyPayment's own docstring already said should happen ("a risk-scan failure still returns isValid: true... VAPOR informs, it doesn't unilaterally decide") but the code didn't actually deliver on for an infra failure, only for a completed-but-negative scan.

Tests

Adds tests/unit/verification.service.test.ts (new — no prior unit test covered verifyPayment's own branching at all), covering both new degrade paths plus the existing success/nonce-reuse/insufficient-balance/policy-denial behavior so this can't silently regress again.

npx tsc --noEmit clean. New test file: 7/7 passing. Pre-existing failures in tests/integration/{app,api-key-scoping,route-scoped-middleware}.test.ts (all /stats-related, DB/Prisma setup issue) confirmed present identically on main without this change — unrelated to this fix.

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Generated by Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Payment verification now handles temporary blockchain connection failures gracefully.
  • Risk-scanning service interruptions no longer cause verification requests to fail unexpectedly.
  • Authorization, balance, and risk policies continue to be enforced when required data is available.

• Tests

  • Added coverage for successful verification, policy violations, insufficient balances, reused authorizations, and service failures.

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

The pull request is closed.

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 26e68b2b-7409-46c4-946a-8a8692945c0f

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 69d27f7 and 419d2e3.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• src/core/verification/verification.service.ts
• tests/unit/verification.service.test.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

verifyPayment now handles on-chain RPC and risk-scanning failures without propagating exceptions. New unit tests cover successful verification, invalid authorization states, insufficient balances, policy rejection, and degraded infrastructure paths.

Changes

Verification resilience

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Guard verification control flow src/core/verification/verification.service.ts	On-chain read failures return a deterministic invalid result, while risk-scanning failures return a valid result without riskAssessment.
Validate verification outcomes tests/unit/verification.service.test.ts	Mocks verification dependencies and tests success, RPC failures, risk-scan failures, policy rejection, nonce replay, and insufficient balance handling.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/verify-settle-rpc-failure-handling

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