Gateway and OFR Setup

Solana Gateway and OFR Setup

Get authorization header

In order to receive shreds through the Optimized Feed Relay (OFR) and connect to bloXroute's OFR Relay, you must use a OFR Gateway. To do this, you need to Create An Account and get Authorization.

Installation

docker pull bloxroute/solana-gateway:latest

Startup

docker run --name bxgateway-solana -d \
  --network=host bloxroute/solana-gateway:latest \
  -auth-header=[AuthHeader] \
  -network-interface=eno1 \
  -tvu-port=8001 \
  -ofr-host=ny.solana-v2.blxrbdn.com \
  -port=18888

The values used for network-interface argument and tvu-port argument could vary based on the hosting machine. Please follow the gateway arguments section to determine the proper values.

Verify the Gateway and OFR is running correctly

To verify that your Gateway is running correctly and shreds are being received through OFR, monitor the stdout or logfile logs. Every minute it should report the amount of shreds it sends and receives.

The output should be similar to the following:

time="2025-01-06T10:56:00.000160" level="info" msg="stats: total shreds by source: [(10.142.0.47:0, 449771), (185.26.9.3:8381, 434018)] unseen shreds by source: [(185.26.9.3:8381, 385382), (10.142.0.47:0, 70913)]. Seen 84.46% of shreds first from BDN"

Note: The Gateway does not need to be restarted if your Solana node restarts.

Sample program to receive shreds through OFR

Traders with Enterprise Elite plan or above can start a ofr gateway to run without a local Solana node, with gateway startup arguments like -no-validator -broadcast-addresses 127.0.0.1:1820. Custom programs can then be deployed to listen at the addresses to receive and consume shreds from the OFR Relay.

For example, running a custom UDP server with code below to receive shreds from gateway:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net"
)

func main() {
	conn, err := net.ListenUDP("udp", &net.UDPAddr{
		IP:   net.ParseIP("0.0.0.0"),
		Port: 1820,
	})
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("Error starting UDP server: %v\n", err)
		return
	}
	defer conn.Close()

	fmt.Printf("UDP server listening\n")

	buffer := make([]byte, 1228) // 1228 - udp shred size

	// Continuously read data
	for {
		n, addr, err := conn.ReadFromUDP(buffer)
		if err != nil {
			fmt.Printf("Error reading from UDP connection: %v\n", err)
			continue
		}
		
		// or process it generally
		fmt.Printf("Received message from %s: %s\n", addr.String(), string(buffer[:n]))
	}
}

Firedancer Compatibility

OFR provides partial compatibility with Firedancer specifically due to its XDP-based networking architecture. Currently, integrating with Firedancer requires an Enterprise Elite subscription tier or higher. The following outlines the configuration process for deploying an OFR Gateway with Firedancer:

docker run --name bxgateway-solana -d \
  --network=host bloxroute/solana-gateway:latest \
  -auth-header=[AuthHeader] \
  -network-interface=eno1 \
  -tvu-port=8001 \
  -ofr-host=ny.solana-v2.blxrbdn.com \
  -port=18888 \
  -no-validator \ # disable validator
  -broadcast-addresses 127.0.0.1:8001 # broadcast shreds to tvu-port on lo
  
# This configuration enables direct transmission of shreds to the loopback (`lo`) 
# interface, where they are subsequently processed by the XDP subsystem and 
# dedicated shred tiles.