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IPC Integration

In addition to HTTP RPC and WebSockets, the Kakitu node exposes an IPC interface for lower-overhead local integration.

IPC vs RPC

Feature HTTP RPC IPC
Protocol HTTP/1.1 Raw TCP / Unix socket
Overhead Medium (HTTP headers) Low
Use case General integration, remote access High-frequency local clients
Authentication IP-based (bind to localhost) File permissions (local socket)

For most integrations, HTTP RPC is simpler and sufficient. IPC is useful when minimizing latency for high-frequency block processing on the same machine.

Enabling IPC

In config-node.toml:

TCP IPC

[ipc.tcp]
enabled = true
port = 7077

Local Socket (Unix domain socket)

[ipc.local]
enabled = true
path = "/tmp/kakitu"

IPC Message Format

IPC uses a custom framing protocol. Messages are length-prefixed raw bytes. The body format mirrors the JSON used in HTTP RPC, but the framing and encoding differ.

The recommended approach for most developers is to use a library that wraps IPC:

Example (Go)

import "github.com/kakitucurrency/gokakitu"

client, err := gokakitu.NewIPCClient("/tmp/kakitu")
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}
defer client.Close()

result, err := client.Call("account_balance", map[string]string{
    "account": "kshs_3t6k35gi95xu6tergt6p69ck76ogmitsa8mnijtpxm9fkcm736xtoncuohr3",
})

Security

  • Unix socket: Access is controlled by file system permissions. Restrict to the user running the node.
  • TCP IPC: Bind to 127.0.0.1 only. Do not expose to the network.
[ipc.tcp]
enabled = true
port = 7077
# Bind to localhost implicitly when IPC is used on the same machine

For Docker deployments, IPC over TCP (port 7077) is more practical than Unix sockets. Unix sockets require sharing the socket file between containers.