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Run a Kakitu Node

Running a Kakitu representative node helps secure and decentralise the network. Representatives participate in consensus (Open Representative Voting) by voting on blocks. The more weight delegated to independent representatives, the more resilient the network.

What is a Representative?

In Kakitu's ORV consensus model, every account can delegate its voting weight to a representative. Representatives vote to confirm transactions. You don't need to hold any KSHS to run a representative — you just need a node that is online and reachable.

Option A: Deploy on Railway (Easiest)

Railway is a cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy Docker containers with persistent storage.

Steps

  1. Create a free Railway account at railway.app.
  2. Click New Project → Deploy from Docker Image.
  3. Enter the image: kakitucurrency/kakitu-node:latest.
  4. Set environment variables:
Variable Value
KAKITU_NETWORK live
  1. Add a Volume mounted at /root/KakituData (minimum 20 GB).
  2. Expose port 44075 (TCP + UDP) for P2P and 44076 (TCP) for RPC.
  3. Deploy.

The node will start syncing. Check the logs in Railway's dashboard.

Enable RPC on Railway

To use the RPC from outside Railway, expose port 44076 and add the following to your node config (via a mounted config file or environment variable):

[rpc]
enable = true
address = "::ffff:0.0.0.0"
port = 44076
enable_control = false   # keep false on public nodes

Option B: Deploy on a VPS (Ubuntu 22.04)

1. Provision a Server

Recommended specs:

Resource Minimum
CPU 2 vCPUs
RAM 4 GB
Disk 40 GB SSD
OS Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Providers: DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Linode, Vultr, AWS EC2.

2. Open Firewall Ports

sudo ufw allow 44075/tcp
sudo ufw allow 44075/udp
sudo ufw allow 44076/tcp   # RPC (restrict to trusted IPs in production)
sudo ufw allow 44078/tcp   # WebSocket (optional)
sudo ufw enable

3. Install Docker

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and back in, then verify:

docker --version

4. Run the Node

docker run -d \
  --name kakitu-node \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 44075:44075/udp \
  -p 44075:44075/tcp \
  -p 44076:44076 \
  -v kakitu-data:/root/KakituData \
  kakitucurrency/kakitu-node:latest \
  kakitu_node daemon --network=live

5. Configure Peering

docker exec kakitu-node bash -c "
cat >> /root/KakituData/config-node.toml <<EOF
[node]
preconfigured_peers = [\"peering.kakitu.org:56111\"]
EOF
"
docker restart kakitu-node

6. Verify Sync

curl -d '{"action":"block_count"}' http://localhost:44076

The cemented count should increase over time.

Promote Your Node as a Representative

Once your node is online and synced, share your node's kshs_ address so other users can delegate their voting weight to you.

To find your representative address:

curl -d '{"action":"wallet_representative","wallet":"<your-wallet-id>"}' \
     http://localhost:44076

Announce it in the Kakitu community so others can delegate to you.

Monitoring

Check node status:

# Block count
curl -d '{"action":"block_count"}' http://localhost:44076

# Peer count
curl -d '{"action":"peers"}' http://localhost:44076

# Node version
curl -d '{"action":"version"}' http://localhost:44076

For production nodes, consider setting up Uptime Kuma or a similar monitoring tool to alert you if the node goes offline.