Running the Price feeder

How to run your own Oracle and price feeder

The Price Feeder is an application used by validators to easily provide price feeds to the oracle module. The application abstracts away all the Oracle module requirements to the validators.

Only validators are required to run the price-feeder. The module doesn't affect full nodes.

Validators who don't provide feeds for the oracle module will be slashed.

Price feeder details

The Price Feeder is an essential component for validators added to Kiichain since version v3.0.0 to provide accurate cryptocurrency price data to the Kiichain network using the Oracle module.

Prerequisites

A running Kiichain validator node
At least 1000000000000000000akii (1 Kii) in your validator account for feeder delegation

There are no fees to run the price feeder:

As long as it's voting once per voting period
And the voter is the expected address for each validator

Exchange Rates and Providers

These are the prices stored on the blockchain (represented in USD).

$BTC
$ETC
$SOL
$XRP
$BNB
$USDT
$USDC
$TRX

These are the providers by default on the price feeder:

Feeder account

One important concept about the Oracle module and price-feeder is the feeder account.

The feeder is an account that:

Separates your validator address from the account handling oracle feeds
- This increases the security of your validator's main address
- Keeps the validator’s signing key offline

We highly recommend using a feeder account for the price-feeder:

Make sure that the feeder or any other accounts used on the price-feeder will not be used anywhere else:
- Changes in account sequence may make the price-feeder fail to send TXs

Feeder account setup

To set up or update your feeder account, you can use the following TX:

# Set the variables for the transaction
FEEDER_ADDR=kii1... # Update with your feeder address
# The key name of the signer
# Should be the same as the one used to manage your validator
FROM_KEY_NAME=<key_name>

# Create the feeder
kiichaind tx oracle set-feeder $FEEDER_ADDR \
    --from $FROM_KEY_NAME --keyring-backend test \
    --gas auto --gas-adjustment 1.5 --gas-prices 100000000000akii \
    --node https://rpc.uno.sentry.testnet.v3.kiivalidator.com --chain-id oro_1336-1
    
# Fund feeder account
kiichaind tx bank send <validator-wallet> $FEEDER_ADDR 1000000000000000000akii \
    --from $FROM_KEY_NAME --keyring-backend test \
    --gas auto --gas-adjustment 1.5 --gas-prices 100000000000akii \
    --node https://rpc.uno.sentry.testnet.v3.kiivalidator.com --chain-id oro_1336-1

Upon TX success, the FEEDER_ADDR can then be used to provide price feeds for the Oracle module.

Make sure that the feeder address has some Kii in its balance:

Although providing feeds is free, the account must exist on the chain and have a balance available

Installation Steps

The price feeder can be easily installed with our bootstrap script:

Run price feeder

The script will automatically:

Build and install the price-feeder
Create a dedicated feeder account
Delegate price reporting rights
Fund the feeder account
Configure the systemd service

To execute it, just run:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KiiChain/testnets/main/testnet_oro/run_price_feeder.sh
chmod +x run_price_feeder.sh
./run_price_feeder.sh

We highly recommend using this bootstrap script to setup the price-feeder.

You can also use it as a reference when preparing your own deployment.

Manual installation

You can also install the price-feeder manually by following these steps:

Build and install the price feeder

# Clone the price feeder
git clone https://github.com/KiiChain/price-feeder.git

# Install the application
cd price-feeder
make install

# Test if the binary was installed correctly
price-feeder version

2. Configure the price-feeder

Download our example config with:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KiiChain/price-feeder/refs/heads/main/config.example.toml
mv config.example.toml price-feeder.config

Now read the file and update all the main configurations based on our next section:

Price feeder configuration

Test your configuration

You can always test your configuration using:

# Export your feeder private key
export PRICE_FEEDER_PASS=<my_keyring_pass>

# Run the price feeder
# You may also provide the argument --skip-password if your keyring is test
# or has no password
price-feeder start price-feeder.config

Pay attention to the logs and errors
After running for a few seconds, all errors should clear out
If errors persist, your feeder address may be configured incorrectly

Create the systemctl service

Upon confirmation that the price feeder is correctly configured, you can turn it into a service with this example systemd service file:

[Unit]
Description=Price Feeder
After=network-online.target
 
[Service]
User=root
Type=simple
Environment="PRICE_FEEDER_PASS=YOUR_KEYRING_PASSWORD"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/price-feeder start /price_feeder_config.toml
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=3
LimitNOFILE=6553500
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Don't forget to check:

Your user is not root
The path for the price-feeder and the path for the configuration file
Your keyring password

Verify Operation

Check the service logs:

journalctl -fu price_feeder.service

Price feeder configuration

There are multiple configurations that are important when managing the price feeder:

The main template for configuration can be found here

Some important configurations are:

[account]
# The account name to use for signing transactions
# Can be the validator master account or a feeder account
address = "kii1..."
# The validator who is voting
validator = "kiivaloper1..."
# The prefix for the keys
prefix = "kii"
# The chain ID for signatures
chain_id = "oro_1336-1"

Here you should set up the details of your account:

address: This is the feeder address used on the price-feeder
validator: This is your validator address. This is important when sending the feeds to the Oracle module

[rpc]
# The RPC endpoint for the node that will send transactions
grpc_endpoint = "localhost:9090"
# The timeout for RPC calls
rpc_timeout = "500ms"
# The Tendermint RPC endpoint for querying the blockchain
tmrpc_endpoint = "http://localhost:26657"

The above defines your RPC configuration:

It's highly recommended to point the endpoints to local nodes, but pointing to remote nodes is also possible

[keyring]
# The keyring backend to use for storing keys
backend = "os"
# The keyring directory where keys are stored
dir = "~/.kiichain"

This defines your keyring configuration:

We highly recommend using OS as your keyring for the feeder key
The Keyring password should be provided with the environment key PRICE_FEEDER_PASS

Important Note: Oracle Voting Performance Requirements

Validators running the Price Feeder must maintain a high success rate when submitting price votes. The Oracle module enforces this through a slashing mechanism:

MinValidPerWindow Parameter: This governance-defined threshold (5%) sets the minimum percentage of successful votes a validator must submit per voting window (3600 blocks).
Penalty for Underperformance: If a validator’s ratio of successful votes / total votes falls below MinValidPerWindow:
- The validator is automatically jailed
- It cannot participate in consensus or earn staking rewards
- Manual unjailing requires a governance proposal or fixed downtime duration
Recommendations for Validators:
- Monitor your feeder’s logs (journalctl -fu price_feeder.service)
- Ensure stable API connections to price providers
- Maintain sufficient gas fees for timely transactions

If you are using os as KEYRING_BACKEND make sure you have set the env variable PRICE_FEEDER_PASS with your keyring password. If not, the script run_price_feeder.sh will ask you to type your keyring password using the CLI.

References

Acknowledgment

This is the Kiichain version of the incredible work of SEI on the price feeder module. The original implementation is available at SEI's price-feeder.

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Last updated 3 months ago