Admin Guide

The RPC service allows you to communicate directly with Soroban via a JSON RPC interface.

For example, you can build an application and have it send a transaction, get ledger and event data, or simulate transactions.

Alternatively, you can use one of Soroban's client SDKs, such as the @stellar/stellar-sdk, which will need to communicate with an RPC instance to access the network.

Run Your Own Instance for Development

For local development, we recommend downloading and running a local instance via Docker Quickstart and running a standalone network or communicating with a live development Testnet.

caution

We don't recommend running the Quickstart image in production. See the deploy your own RPC instance section.

The Quickstart image with the RPC service can run on a standard laptop with 8GB of RAM and has minimal storage and CPU requirements. It is a single container that runs everything you need to test against a fully featured network. It contains:

Stellar Core - Node software that runs the network, coordinates consensus, and finalizes ledgers.
Stellar RPC server - JSON RPC server for interacting with Soroban contracts.
Horizon server - HTTP API for accessing ledger state and historical transactions.
Friendbot server - HTTP API for creating and funding new accounts on test networks.

Standalone

To run a local standalone network with the Stellar Quickstart Docker image, run the following command:

docker run --rm -it \
    -p 8000:8000 \
    --name stellar \
    stellar/quickstart:testing \
    --standalone \
    --enable-soroban-rpc

Once the image is started, you can check its status by querying the Horizon API:

curl "http://localhost:8000"

You can interact with this local node using the Stellar CLI. First, add it as a configured network:

stellar network add standalone \
    --rpc-url "http://localhost:8000/soroban/rpc" \
    --network-passphrase "Standalone Network ; February 2017"

Then generate a unique identity (public/private keypair) and to fund it using:

stellar keys generate alice

Test-only Identities

It's a good practice to never use the same keys for testing and development that you use for the public Stellar network. Generate new keys for testing and development and avoid using them for other purposes.

Now that you have a configured network and a funded identity, you can use these within other Stellar CLI commands. For example, deploying a contract:

stellar contract deploy \
    --wasm target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/[project_name].wasm \
    --source alice \
    --network standalone

Or invoking a contract:

stellar contract invoke \
    --id C... \
    --source alice \
    --network standalone \
    -- \
    hello \
    --to friend

When you're done with your Standalone node, you can close it with ctrlc (not cmd). This will fully remove the container (that's what the --rm option to the docker command does), which means you will need to re-deploy your contract and re-fund your identity the next time you start it. If you work with local nodes often, you may want to create scripts to make these initialization steps easier. For example, see the example dapp's initialize.sh.

Testnet

Running your own Testnet node works much the same way as running a Quickstart node, as described above. You will need minor modifications for a few commands. First, you need --testnet for the docker instance, rather than --standalone:

docker run --rm -it \
    -p 8000:8000 \
    --name stellar \
    stellar/quickstart:testing \
    --testnet \
    --enable-soroban-rpc

And you'll want to configure it for use with the --network flag in Stellar CLI:

stellar network add testnet \
    --rpc-url "http://localhost:8000/soroban/rpc" \
    --network-passphrase "Test SDF Network ; September 2015"

Replace testnet in that command with the name of your choice if you want to leave the name testnet available for use with a public RPC provider (see below). Or make clever use of --global configs for public providers and local configs (made with the undecorated network add command above) for local nodes.

Now you can replace --network standalone with --network testnet (or whatever you named it) in all your commands that need a network, like the deploy and invoke commands shown above.

Futurenet

You can also develop your Soroban contracts against the Futurenet network. You may choose this if you want to test more bleeding-edge features that haven't made it to the Testnet yet. Running your own Futurenet node works just like running a Testnet node, as described above.

docker run --rm -it \
    -p 8000:8000 \
    --name stellar \
    stellar/quickstart:soroban-dev \
    --futurenet \
    --enable-soroban-rpc

And you'll want to configure it for use with the --network flag in Stellar CLI:

stellar network add futurenet \
    --rpc-url "http://localhost:8000/soroban/rpc" \
    --network-passphrase "Test SDF Future Network ; October 2022"

Replace futurenet in that command with the name of your choice, if you want to leave the name futurenet available for use with a public RPC provider (see below). Or make clever use of --global configs for public providers and local configs (made with the undecorated network add command above) for local nodes.

Now you can replace --network standalone with --network futurenet (or whatever you named it) in all your commands that need a network, like the deploy and invoke commands shown above.

Deploy Your Own RPC Instance

We recommend the following ways to deploy your own RPC instance:

Deploy to Kubernetes using Helm
Run the stellar-rpc docker image directly

Hardware Requirements

For deployments expecting up to 1000 requests per second to Stellar RPC, we recommend at least 4GB of RAM and at least a dual core CPU with a 2.4GHz clock speed.

For deployments expecting 1000-10000+ requests per second to Stellar RPC, we recommend at least 8GB of RAM and at least a quad core CPU with a 2.4GHz clock speed.

For all deployments, we recommend at least 10GB of disk/storage space.

Node Type	CPU	RAM	Disk	AWS SKU	Google Cloud SKU
Stellar RPC	2 vCPU	4-8 GB	30 GB persistent volume >= 3K IOPS	c5.large	n4-highcpu-2

* Assuming a 7-day retention window for data storage.

Kubernetes With Helm

If your deployment environment includes Kubernetes infrastructure, this is the preferred way to deploy your RPC instance. Here’s what you need to do:

Install the Helm CLI tool (minimum version 3)
Add the Stellar repo to the helm client's list of repos, update it to the latest published versions

helm repo add stellar https://helm.stellar.org/charts
helm repo update stellar

Deploy the RPC instance to Kubernetes using our Helm chart:

helm install my-rpc stellar/stellar-rpc \
--namespace my-rpc-namespace-on-cluster \
--set global.image.sorobanRpc.tag=20.0.0-rc4-40 \
--set sorobanRpc.ingress.host=myrpc.example.org \
--set sorobanRpc.persistence.enabled=true \
--set sorobanRpc.persistence.storageClass=default \
--set sorobanRpc.resources.limits.cpu=1 \
--set sorobanRpc.resources.limits.memory=2560Mi

This example of Helm chart usage highlights some key aspects:

Set the global.image.sorobanRpc.tag to a tag from the stellar-rpc dockerhub repo for the image version you want to run. Refer to the software versions page to find the correct tag for the Soroban release you are running.
The RPC server stores a revolving window of recent data from network ledgers to disk. The size of that data varies depending on the network and its transaction volumes, but it has an estimated range between 10 to 100 MB. To ensure the RPC pod has consistent access to disk storage space and read/write throughput, this example demonstrates how to optionally enable the Helm chart deployment to use a PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) of 100MB from default storage class on Kubernetes by enabling these persistence parameters:

--set sorobanRpc.persistence.enabled=true
--set sorobanRpc.persistence.storageClass=default

By default, this is disabled (sorobanRpc.persistence.enabled=false) and the RPC deployment will use ephemeral pod storage via emptyDir, which will likely be adequate for futurenet and testnet transaction volumes. However, it's worth highlighting the trade-off of not having storage limitations of the cluster enforced (likely below 100MB).

Network presets are defined in values.yaml, which currently sets network configuration specific to futurenet. You can override this default and use other "canned" values.yaml files which have been published for other networks. For example, there is a values-testnet.yaml file to configure the deployment of the RPC server with the testnet network. Include this --values parameter in your helm install to specify the desired network:

--values https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stellar/helm-charts/main/charts/soroban-rpc/values-testnet.yaml

Configuring RPC to use other custom networks can be accomplished by downloading the values.yaml locally and updating settings under sorobanRpc.sorobanRpcConfig and sorobanRpc.coreConfig. This is applicable when connecting to specific networks other than the existing files like values.yaml available, such as your own standalone network. Include the local values.yaml in helm install:

--values my-custom-values.yaml

Verify the LimitRange defaults in the target namespace in Kubernetes for deployment. LimitRange is optional on the cluster config. If defined, ensure that the defaults provide at least minimum RPC server resource limits of 2.5Gi of memory and 1 CPU. Otherwise, include the limits explicitly on the helm install command via the sorobanRpc.resources.limits.* parameters:

--set sorobanRpc.resources.limits.cpu=1
--set sorobanRpc.resources.limits.memory=2560Mi

Even if you're not deploying Stellar RPC using Kubernetes, the manifests generated by the charts may still be a good reference for showing how to configure and run Stellar RPC as a docker container. Just run the helm template command to print the container configuration to screen:

helm template my-rpc stellar/stellar-rpc

Docker Image

If using Kubernetes is not an option, this is the preferred way to deploy your own RPC instance.

caution

Although we have a Quickstart Image, it's for local development and testing only. It is not suitable for production-grade deployments.

Here's how to run the stellar-rpc docker image:

Pull the image at the version you'd like to run from the tags:

docker pull stellar/stellar-rpc

Create a configuration file for Stellar Core. Here is a sample configuration file for Testnet:

HTTP_PORT=11626
PUBLIC_HTTP_PORT=false

NETWORK_PASSPHRASE="Test SDF Network ; September 2015"

DATABASE="sqlite3://stellar.db"

# Stellar Testnet Validators
[[HOME_DOMAINS]]
HOME_DOMAIN="testnet.stellar.org"
QUALITY="HIGH"

[[VALIDATORS]]
NAME="sdftest1"
HOME_DOMAIN="testnet.stellar.org"
PUBLIC_KEY="GDKXE2OZMJIPOSLNA6N6F2BVCI3O777I2OOC4BV7VOYUEHYX7RTRYA7Y"
ADDRESS="core-testnet1.stellar.org"
HISTORY="curl -sf http://history.stellar.org/prd/core-testnet/core_testnet_001/{0} -o {1}"

[[VALIDATORS]]
NAME="sdftest2"
HOME_DOMAIN="testnet.stellar.org"
PUBLIC_KEY="GCUCJTIYXSOXKBSNFGNFWW5MUQ54HKRPGJUTQFJ5RQXZXNOLNXYDHRAP"
ADDRESS="core-testnet2.stellar.org"
HISTORY="curl -sf http://history.stellar.org/prd/core-testnet/core_testnet_002/{0} -o {1}"

[[VALIDATORS]]
NAME="sdftest3"
HOME_DOMAIN="testnet.stellar.org"
PUBLIC_KEY="GC2V2EFSXN6SQTWVYA5EPJPBWWIMSD2XQNKUOHGEKB535AQE2I6IXV2Z"
ADDRESS="core-testnet3.stellar.org"
HISTORY="curl -sf http://history.stellar.org/prd/core-testnet/core_testnet_003/{0} -o {1}"

Run the image, making sure to mount a volume to your container where the above configuration is stored. An example for Testnet:

docker run -p 8001:8001 -p 8000:8000 \
-v <STELLAR_CORE_CONFIG_FOLDER>:/config stellar/stellar-rpc \
--captive-core-config-path="/config/<STELLAR_CORE_CONFIG_PATH>" \
--captive-core-storage-path="/var/lib/stellar/captive-core" \
--captive-core-use-db=true \
--stellar-core-binary-path="/usr/bin/stellar-core" \
--db-path="/var/lib/stellar/soroban-rpc-db.sqlite" \
--stellar-captive-core-http-port=11626 \
--friendbot-url="https://friendbot-testnet.stellar.org/" \
--network-passphrase="Test SDF Network ; September 2015" \
--history-archive-urls="https://history.stellar.org/prd/core-testnet/core_testnet_001" \
--admin-endpoint="0.0.0.0:8001" \
--endpoint="0.0.0.0:8000"

Configuration

For production, we recommend running Stellar RPC with a TOML configuration file rather than CLI flags. This is similar to creating a configuration file for Stellar-Core as we did previously. For example, using our docker image:

docker run -p 8001:8001 -p 8000:8000 \
-v <CONFIG_FOLDER>:/config stellar/stellar-rpc \
--config-path <RPC_CONFIG_FILENAME>

You can use Stellar RPC itself to generate a starter configuration file:

docker run stellar/stellar-rpc gen-config-file > soroban-rpc-config.toml

The resulting configuration should look like this:

# Admin endpoint to listen and serve on. WARNING: this should not be accessible
# from the Internet and does not use TLS. "" (default) disables the admin server
# ADMIN_ENDPOINT = "0.0.0.0:8001"

# path to additional configuration for the Stellar Core configuration file used
# by captive core. It must, at least, include enough details to define a quorum
# set
# CAPTIVE_CORE_CONFIG_PATH = ""

# Storage location for Captive Core bucket data
CAPTIVE_CORE_STORAGE_PATH = "/"

# informs captive core to use on disk mode. the db will by default be created in
# current runtime directory of stellar-rpc, unless DATABASE=<path> setting is
# present in captive core config file.
# CAPTIVE_CORE_USE_DB = false

# establishes how many ledgers exist between checkpoints, do NOT change this
# unless you really know what you are doing
CHECKPOINT_FREQUENCY = 64

# SQLite DB path
DB_PATH = "soroban_rpc.sqlite"

# Default cap on the amount of events included in a single getEvents response
DEFAULT_EVENTS_LIMIT = 100

# Endpoint to listen and serve on
ENDPOINT = "0.0.0.0:8000"

# The friendbot URL to be returned by getNetwork endpoint
# FRIENDBOT_URL = ""

# comma-separated list of stellar history archives to connect with
HISTORY_ARCHIVE_URLS = []

# Ingestion Timeout when bootstrapping data (checkpoint and in-memory
# initialization) and preparing ledger reads
INGESTION_TIMEOUT = "30m0s"

# format used for output logs (json or text)
# LOG_FORMAT = "text"

# minimum log severity (debug, info, warn, error) to log
LOG_LEVEL = "info"

# Maximum amount of events allowed in a single getEvents response
MAX_EVENTS_LIMIT = 10000

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getEvents request. When
# that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the request's
# execution
MAX_GET_EVENTS_EXECUTION_DURATION = "10s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getHealth request. When
# that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the request's
# execution
MAX_GET_HEALTH_EXECUTION_DURATION = "5s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getLatestLedger request.
# When that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the
# request's execution
MAX_GET_LATEST_LEDGER_EXECUTION_DURATION = "5s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getLedgerEntries
# request. When that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort
# the request's execution
MAX_GET_LEDGER_ENTRIES_EXECUTION_DURATION = "5s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getNetwork request. When
# that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the request's
# execution
MAX_GET_NETWORK_EXECUTION_DURATION = "5s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a getTransaction request.
# When that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the
# request's execution
MAX_GET_TRANSACTION_EXECUTION_DURATION = "5s"

# maximum ledger latency (i.e. time elapsed since the last known ledger closing
# time) considered to be healthy (used for the /health endpoint)
MAX_HEALTHY_LEDGER_LATENCY = "30s"

# The max request execution duration is the predefined maximum duration of time
# allowed for processing a request. When that time elapses, the server would
# return 504 and abort the request's execution
MAX_REQUEST_EXECUTION_DURATION = "25s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a sendTransaction request.
# When that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort the
# request's execution
MAX_SEND_TRANSACTION_EXECUTION_DURATION = "15s"

# The maximum duration of time allowed for processing a simulateTransaction
# request. When that time elapses, the rpc server would return -32001 and abort
# the request's execution
MAX_SIMULATE_TRANSACTION_EXECUTION_DURATION = "15s"

# Network passphrase of the Stellar network transactions should be signed for.
# Commonly used values are "Test SDF Future Network ; October 2022", "Test SDF
# Network ; September 2015" and "Public Global Stellar Network ; September 2015"
# NETWORK_PASSPHRASE = ""

# Number of workers (read goroutines) used to compute preflights for the
# simulateTransaction endpoint. Defaults to the number of CPUs.
PREFLIGHT_WORKER_COUNT = 16

# Maximum number of outstanding preflight requests for the simulateTransaction
# endpoint. Defaults to the number of CPUs.
PREFLIGHT_WORKER_QUEUE_SIZE = 16

# Maximum number of outstanding GetEvents requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_EVENTS_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding GetHealth requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_HEALTH_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding GetLatestsLedger requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_LATEST_LEDGER_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding GetLedgerEntries requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_LEDGER_ENTRIES_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding GetNetwork requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_NETWORK_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding GetTransaction requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GET_TRANSACTION_QUEUE_LIMIT = 1000

# Maximum number of outstanding requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_GLOBAL_QUEUE_LIMIT = 5000

# Maximum number of outstanding SendTransaction requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_SEND_TRANSACTION_QUEUE_LIMIT = 500

# Maximum number of outstanding SimulateTransaction requests
REQUEST_BACKLOG_SIMULATE_TRANSACTION_QUEUE_LIMIT = 100

# The request execution warning threshold is the predetermined maximum duration
# of time that a request can take to be processed before a warning would be
# generated
REQUEST_EXECUTION_WARNING_THRESHOLD = "5s"

# HTTP port for Captive Core to listen on (0 disables the HTTP server)
STELLAR_CAPTIVE_CORE_HTTP_PORT = 11626

# path to stellar core binary
STELLAR_CORE_BINARY_PATH = "/usr/bin/stellar-core"

# Timeout used when submitting requests to stellar-core
STELLAR_CORE_TIMEOUT = "2s"

# URL used to query Stellar Core (local captive core by default)
# STELLAR_CORE_URL = ""

# Enable strict toml configuration file parsing. This will prevent unknown
# fields in the config toml from being parsed.
# STRICT = false

# configures the transaction retention window expressed in number of ledgers,
# the default value is 1440 which corresponds to about 2 hours of history
TRANSACTION_RETENTION_WINDOW = 1440

Note that the above generated configuration contains the default values and you need to substitute them with proper values to run the image.

Build From Source

Instructions for building Stellar RPC from source can be found here.

Use the RPC Instance

You can configure Stellar CLI to use a remote RPC endpoint:

stellar network add --global testnet \
    --rpc-url https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org:443 \
    --network-passphrase 'Test SDF Network ; September 2015'

And fund your accounts/identities with the publicly hosted Friendbot:

curl "https://friendbot.stellar.org/?addr=$(stellar keys address alice)"

See the tip above about command expansion (that's the note about $(...)) if you're not using a bash-based shell.

caution

When interacting with the network in production you should run your own stellar-rpc or use a third-party infrastructure provider.

Verify the RPC Instance

After installation, it will be worthwhile to verify the installation of Stellar RPC is healthy. There are two methods:

Access the health status endpoint of the JSON RPC service using an HTTP client
Use our pre-built System Test Docker image as a tool to run a set of live tests against Stellar RPC

Health Status Endpoint

If you send a JSON RPC HTTP request to your running instance of Stellar RPC:

curl --location 'http://localhost:8000' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
"jsonrpc":"2.0",
"id":2,
"method":"getHealth"
}'

You should get back an HTTP 200 status response if the instance is healthy:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 2,
  "result": {
    "status": "healthy"
  }
}

System Test Docker Image

This test will compile, deploy, and invoke example contracts to the network to which your RPC instance is connected to. Here is an example for verifying your instance if it is connected to Testnet:

docker run --rm -t --name e2e_test \
docker.io/stellar/system-test:soroban-preview11 \
--VerboseOutput true \
--TargetNetworkRPCURL <your rpc url here> \
--TargetNetworkPassphrase "Test SDF Network ; September 2015" \
--TargetNetworkTestAccountSecret <your test account StrKey encoded key here > \
--TargetNetworkTestAccountPublic <your test account StrKey encoded pubkey here> \
--SorobanExamplesGitHash v21.6.0

Make sure you configure the system test correctly:

Use a published system test tag that aligns with the deployed Stellar RPC release version. For each release, there will be two tags published for different CPU architectures. Make sure to use the tag that matches your host machine's CPU architecture:
- docker.io/stellar/system-test:<release name> for machines with AMD/Intel-based CPUs
- docker.io/stellar/system-test:<release name>-arm64 for machines with ARM CPUs
Set --TargetNetworkRPCURL to your RPC HTTP URL
Set --TargetNetworkPassphrase to the same network your RPC instance is connected to:
- "Test SDF Network ; September 2015" for Testnet
- "Test SDF Future Network ; October 2022" for Futurenet
Set --SorobanExamplesGitHash to the corresponding release tag on the Soroban Examples repo
Create and fund an account to be used for test purposes on the same network your RPC instance is connected to
- This account needs a small XLM balance to submit Soroban transactions
- Tests can be run repeatedly with the same account
- Set --TargetNetworkTestAccountPublic to the StrKey encoded public key of the account
- Set --TargetNetworkTestAccountSecret to the StrKey encoded secret for the account

Monitor the RPC Instance

If you run Stellar RPC with the --admin-endpoint configured and expose the port, you'll have access to the Prometheus metrics via the /metrics endpoint. For example, if the admin endpoint is 0.0.0.0:8001 and you're running the Stellar RPC Docker image:

curl localhost:8001/metrics

You will see many of the default Go and Process metrics (prefixed by go_ and process_ respectively) such as memory usage, CPU usage, number of threads, etc.

We also expose metrics related to Stellar RPC (prefixed by soroban_rpc). There are many, but some notable ones are:

soroban_rpc_transactions_count - count of transactions ingested with a sliding window of 10m
soroban_rpc_events_count - count of events ingested with a sliding window of 10m
soroban_rpc_ingest_local_latest_ledger - latest ledger ingested
soroban_rpc_db_round_trip_time_seconds - time required to run SELECT 1 query in the DATABASE

Stellar RPC also provides logging to console for:

Startup activity
Ingesting, applying, and closing ledgers
Handling JSON RPC requests
Any errors

The logs have the format:

time=<timestamp in YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.000Z format> level=<debug|info|error> msg=<Actual message> pid=<process ID> subservice=<optional if coming from subservice>

Run Your Own Instance for Development​

Standalone​

Testnet​

Futurenet​

Deploy Your Own RPC Instance​

Hardware Requirements​

Kubernetes With Helm​

Docker Image​

Configuration​

Build From Source​

Use the RPC Instance​

Verify the RPC Instance​

Health Status Endpoint​

System Test Docker Image​

Monitor the RPC Instance​

Run Your Own Instance for Development

Standalone

Testnet

Futurenet

Deploy Your Own RPC Instance

Hardware Requirements

Kubernetes With Helm

Docker Image

Configuration

Build From Source

Use the RPC Instance

Verify the RPC Instance

Health Status Endpoint

System Test Docker Image

Monitor the RPC Instance