WebSocket opens many connections in during and after reconnection

[alvrs]

Check existing issues

• I checked there isn't already an issue for the bug I encountered.

Viem Version

2.31.7

Current Behavior

When the WebSocket transport loses connection, the reconnection logic can cause it to open multiple connections. It's possible to get into a situation where neither the reconnection limit (default 5) nor the delay between new connection attempts are respected, and the client ends up creating lots of open WebSocket connections.

Expected Behavior

• The WebSocket transport should only attempt to reconnect up to the specified number of times and space out each connection attempt by the specified delay.
• There should only be one WebSocket connection (per server and settings) that should be shared by all clients using the WebSocket transport.

Steps To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce:

• clone the forked repo at alvrs/websocket-repro
• pnpm install && pnpm build at root
• pnpm install && pnpm dev --force at /environments/vite
• open http://localhost:5173/
• open Network inspector
• turn "Throttling" to "Offline"
• wait for reconnection logic to kick in
• observe many WebSocket connection attempts to rpc.redstonechain.com
• turn "Throttling" back to "No throttling"
• observe multiple open WebSocket connections

CleanShot.2025-07-16.at.15.49.31.mp4

Link to Minimal Reproducible Example

latticexyz#1

Anything else?

We also experience this situation when leaving the browser tab in the background for a while. The network throttling approach described above is how we can consistently reproduce it.

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