Tutorial · Try Catscope

Quickstart.

Get the tooling, pull the bot image, and run a bot inside a Solana validator. Should take under an hour.

This guide walks you from a clean machine to a running bot: install the binaries, run the setup wizard, start the proxy, build the bot, and launch the optimizer.

1 · Install binaries

Prerequisites▶

Solana CLI — for solana-keygen (step 2)
git
Rust (rustup) — to build the bot (step 5)
Go 1.26 or newer — to build the optimizer (step 6)
A keypair file holding ~0.1 SOL (step 2)

You need two CLIs: solpipe (proxy + bidder) and safejar (safe wallet).

Latest version: 0.5.1129▶

Check your current version:

bash

solpipe version

Upgrade via Homebrew:

bash

brew upgrade noncepad-solpipe

For Linux / Docker, recreate your container with the new image.

macOS (Homebrew)

bash

brew install noncepad/homebrew-tap/noncepad-solpipe

Linux / Docker

bash

docker build https://noncepad.com/dev/nightly.Dockerfile

Direct downloads (unsigned)▶

Prefer Homebrew: its packages are signed. If you need a standalone binary:

bash

https://catscope.io/downloads/debian/bin/amd64/solpipe
https://catscope.io/downloads/debian/bin/amd64/safejar
https://catscope.io/downloads/macos/bin/intel/solpipe
https://catscope.io/downloads/macos/bin/intel/safejar
https://catscope.io/downloads/macos/bin/arm/solpipe
https://catscope.io/downloads/macos/bin/arm/safejar

2 · Environment setup

Create the directory you'll work in:

bash

mkdir catscope-run
cd catscope-run

You need two things: a wallet file that pays for setup, and an address that recovered funds are swept back to. Using your wallet's own address as SWEEP is the simplest choice; use a colder address if you have one.

bash

export MY_WALLET=$(pwd)/wallet.json              # keypair FILE that pays for setup (needs ~0.1 SOL)
export NETWORK=mainnet                           # mainnet, testnet, devnet, or localnet
export SWEEP=$(solana-keygen pubkey $MY_WALLET)  # ADDRESS that recovered funds go back to

3 · Run the setup wizard

One command sets up everything your bidder needs on the Catscope Read, Write, and Bot market places, in a single transaction:

bash

solpipe -v bidder wizard --fee-payer=$MY_WALLET --out=. $SWEEP

creates your safe wallet (a jar)
creates and funds the proxy's authorizer key
creates a bidder account on each market
creates and approves a delegation on each market: the rules that let the proxy spend from your jar

When it finishes you'll see wizard complete. Note the delegation=… ID logged for each market; you'll need it later to fund the jar for paid bids. The wizard writes four files:

owner.json — the jar owner key
proxy/authorizer.json — the proxy's fee-paying key
proxy/proxy.json — the proxy configuration
proxy/market.db — your bidder state

Back these up

owner.json controls every token in your jar, and proxy/market.db holds your bidder state. Neither can be recovered if lost. Store copies somewhere safe before you fund the jar.

Safe to rerun▶

If the wizard fails (for example, the wallet runs out of SOL), top up and run the same command again in the same directory. It reuses the keys it already created and skips anything that already exists on chain.

4 · Start the proxy

From the same directory, start the proxy. For production, run it as a systemd service.

bash

solpipe -v bidder proxy --fee-payer=./proxy/authorizer.json --config=./proxy/proxy.json

Proxy won't start?▶

If you see bind: address already in use and no proxy is running, a previous proxy left its socket behind. Remove it with rm ~/.solpipe.bidder.proxy.sock and start again.

Leave the proxy running: it holds your connection to the markets, and your bot reaches them through it. Open a second terminal in the same directory for the next steps, and re-run the exports from step 2 there.

5 · Get the bot source

Your bot ships as a WebAssembly module, built from the reference repo. From your working directory, clone it and add the WebAssembly target. You don't need to compile it yourself: the optimizer builds it in the next step.

bash

git clone https://github.com/noncepad/catscope-rust-bot
rustup target add wasm32-wasip2

See Bot Design for how to wire in your own strategy.

6 · Run your first bot

The optimizer is the program on your machine that drives your bot. When you start it, it:

compiles the bot from catscope-rust-bot
asks your proxy (step 4) for a pipeline: a slot in a validator's Catscope runtime
uploads the bot to that validator, where it runs next to live chain data
shows what the bot reports back, live, in your terminal

Your first bot is marketwatchv1: it tracks live pool prices for SOL, JUP, JTO, BONK, WIF and RAY and computes their volatility and correlation, which the optimizer shows as a live dashboard in your terminal. It has no wallet and never trades, so it's a safe way to see the whole pipeline working end to end.

Build the optimizer, still in your working directory:

bash

git clone https://github.com/noncepad/optimizer
cd optimizer && go build -o ./optimizer ./cmd

From inside optimizer, launch the bot with your wallet from step 2 (not proxy/authorizer.json, which belongs to the proxy). The wallet only pays to allocate and upload the bot; logs go to run.log so the dashboard has the terminal:

bash

REPO=$PWD/../catscope-rust-bot ./optimizer market-watch $MY_WALLET 2>run.log