Introduction

Welcome to Ikura! 👋 We help you monitor the health and performance of your blockchain infrastructure, whether it's public endpoints or private nodes.

Currently, setting up your monitoring projects is done using a simple YAML editor right here in the Ikura web app. Instead of clicking through many menus, you define your project settings directly in text format. This approach is straightforward and gives you precise control.

Planning Ahead: Configs & Gists

For now, a great way to keep your YAML configuration safe and versioned is by saving it as a GitHub Gist.

We're working on integrating with Gists more directly in the future, so eventually, updating your Gist could automatically update your Ikura project!

Key Concepts in Ikura

To get the most out of Ikura, let's quickly cover the two main items you'll be monitoring:

• RPC Endpoint: This is a publicly accessible address for interacting with a blockchain network. Think of common URLs like https://cloudflare-eth.com. They usually use HTTP/HTTPS or WebSocket (WS/WSS) protocols and are reachable by anyone over the internet. Ikura connects to these directly to check their status.

• Node: In Ikura, a Node refers to a private service that isn't directly exposed to the public internet. Examples include:

  • Your own private blockchain validator or RPC node.
  • An indexing service (like The Graph or Subquery) running privately.
  • An IPFS node on your server.

  Because these aren't public, monitoring them requires a small piece of helper software (an Ikura agent) installed on the same server or within the same private network as the node you want to track. This agent securely sends status information back to Ikura.