Suppose you're building an e-commerce platform in Go, and you need to implement rate limiting to prevent abuse of your API endpoints. How would you design and implement middleware for this purpose?

Middleware designed for rate limiting intercepts incoming requests, checks the request rate against predefined thresholds, and either allows or denies access accordingly. In this case, tracking the number of requests from each client IP address enables you to enforce rate limits effectively. Utilizing a centralized rate-limiting service introduces additional network overhead and potential single points of failure, complicating the architecture. While cloud service providers offer rate-limiting features, they may not be as flexible or customizable as implementing middleware tailored to your application's specific requirements. Implementing a distributed caching mechanism adds unnecessary complexity and overhead, making it less suitable for this purpose.