Railway Deployment

Railway offers an easy deployment experience for Kora nodes with automatic SSL, domain management, and built-in monitoring. This guide will walk through setting up a Kora node on railway with a simple Docker image and the Railway CLI.

Prerequisites

• Railway Account
• Railway CLI installed
• Solana CLI for private key creation
• Solana RPC Endpoint

Step 1: Prepare Deployment Files

Create a new directory for your Kora node:

mkdir my-kora-node
cd my-kora-node

Add the sample files to your directory:

• kora.toml
• signers.toml
• Dockerfile

Your directory should now look like:

my-kora-node/
├── kora.toml
├── signers.toml
└── Dockerfile

Step 2: Deploy to Railway

From your project directory, login to Railway

# Login to Railway
railway login

Follow the on-screen instructions to log in with your account.

Initialize Railway project in your directory.

railway init

Railway will prompt you to:

1. Create a new project or select existing
2. Choose a project name (e.g., "my-kora-node")

Deploy Your Application

# Deploy the application
railway up

This will:

• Upload your files to Railway
• Build the Docker image
• Deploy your application

Expected output:

Build time: 121.81 seconds
Deploy complete
Starting Container

Great! We are all set up! You will probably notice an error in your logs ("error: a value is required for --rpc-url <RPC_URL> but none was supplied "). This is because we have not yet configured our environment variables--so let's do that next.

Step 3: Configure Environment Variables

Open your Railway dashboard at railway.app and navigate to your project. In your project, click "Settings" > "Variables"

Railway Environment Variables for Kora

Add these environment variables:

Security Warning: Your private key has access to SOL for paying fees. Use a dedicated keypair for your Kora node and only fund it with the SOL you're willing to spend on transaction fees. For more information on signers, see the Signers Guide.

Getting Your Private Key

If you need to create a new keypair:

# Generate new keypair
solana-keygen new --outfile ~/.config/solana/kora-keypair.json

Make sure to deposit adequate SOL for testing/operator your node.

Step 4: Redeploy

After saving your variables, you will be prompted to redeploy your server--do that.

Step 5: Test Your Deployment

Generate Public Endpoint

To send requests to your endpoint, you will need to generate a public Domain. From your deployment, go to "Settings" > "Generate domain".

Railway Domain Setup

Use the default port, "8080" and click "Generate Domain".

You should get a domain like https://my-kora-node.railway.app/

Test Configuration Endpoint

curl -X POST https://my-kora-node.railway.app \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"getConfig","params":[]}' | jq

Expected response:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "result": {
    "fee_payer": "YourPublicKeyHere...",
    "validation_config": {
      "max_allowed_lamports": 1000000,
      "allowed_programs": [...],
      "allowed_spl_paid_tokens": [...]
      // ...
    }
  }
}

Nice job! Your Kora node is now live.

Need Help?

• Kora Node Operators Guide - Common issues and solutions
• Railway Documentation - Platform-specific help
• GitHub Issues - Report bugs or get support
• Solana Stack Exchange - Ask questions/share learnings (make sure to use the kora tag)