Hi there! My name is Collins Munene, and I have been looking at and working on Rafiki for quite some time now and have successfully implemented and paired an instance at Vuza Finance.
If you’re a developer, an organization, or a team passionate about making financial systems interoperable using the Interledger Protocol (ILP), you know the challenges of setting up a proper Rafiki instance. From ensuring configurations are correctly aligned to perusing the documentation, the process can quickly turn into a labyrinth of technical hurdles.
With this experience we have built Rafiki Launch Pad, an open-source solution that changes all of that: a tool that enables users to seamlessly spin up a Rafiki instance without requiring deep technical expertise. Let’s delve into what makes this tool a game-changer for the ILP community.
Why Rafiki Matters
Rafiki is an essential component in enabling financial systems to interact seamlessly across platforms and borders. It offers a clear pathway for implementing the Interledger Protocol by providing a framework to set up open payment services, accounts, and settlements.
However, the process of spinning up a Rafiki instance demands a solid grasp of container orchestration, configuration file adjustments, server setup, and dealing with potential pitfalls during deployment(especially if you are a non-technical user).
The Vision Behind the Tool
We envisioned a future where setting up Rafiki is as simple as a few guided steps, just Click! Click! Done!, empowering more people to get started with ILP. Whether you’re running a hackathon, exploring proof-of-concept implementations, or scaling toward production-level instances, this tool equips you to focus on the rest of your system functionality rather than the Rafiki setup.
Key Features
Open Source: The tool is completely Open Source, following the Interledger Open Source ethos we decided to open up this tool for the community to contribute and audit the solution. Github Repo
Guided Configuration: The tool walks users through every configuration step, ensuring error-free setup and minimizing guesswork.
Dockerized Deployment: With built-in Docker Compose integration, the heavy lifting of container orchestration is handled behind the scenes.
Customizable for Various Use Cases: Whether you’re spinning up a local testing environment or deploying a production-ready instance, the tool adapts to your needs.
Seamless Domain Proxying with Nginx: Automatically sets up Nginx for domain-specific access, simplifying scaling to multiple instances in production.
Hosting Provision: The tool deploys your instance in a server automatically, meaning you do not need to provision server space for your instance.
How It Enhances Developer Experience
Lowering Barriers to Entry
This tool ensures that even individuals with minimal DevOps experience can deploy Rafiki. Gone are the days of manually tweaking YAML files or deciphering complex error messages.
Fast Iterations
Developers can spin up environments quickly to test and iterate on their ILP integrations without the usual deployment delays.
Consistency Across Teams
The tool guarantees that every setup aligns with best practices, leading to fewer discrepancies and smoother teamwork.
Future-Proofing with Easy Updates
As Rafiki evolves, the tool keeps pace, incorporating updates and new features into the setup process with minimal input required from users.
A Tool Built for the Community
We built this tool to solve a fundamental problem for ILP enthusiasts and organizations: accessibility. Our goal is to expand Rafiki’s reach and adoption by making its deployment straightforward, quick, and resilient—so the ILP community can grow faster and dream bigger.
What’s Next?
We’re thrilled to share this tool with the ILP community and can’t wait to see the groundbreaking applications you’ll build with it. In fact, we believe it has the potential to not only accelerate ILP integrations but also spur innovation across sectors that stand to benefit from open payments.
Future Features?
As part of continuous improvement, we are looking at a range of features that we are working towards implementing for this platform. Some of these features are:
- Support for scaling and monitoring the instances via a Dashboard.
- Allowing Peering directly from the UI.
- Integrating cloud-based one-click deployments.
- Built-In Webhook Testing.
- Collaboration Features.
- Auto Backup and Snapshot Support.
- REST API or SDK Support.
How to Get Involved
We’re calling on the amazing ILP Slack community to take this tool for a spin. Your feedback will be invaluable as we continue to refine it. With enough traction, we hope to secure funding & partnerships to push its development even further, enabling enhanced features and extended support.
Want to give it a go? Rafiki Launch Pad Platform (Beta): http://rafiki-launchpad.devligence.com/.
Want to know more? reach out to me via:
- Slack: Collins Hillary
- Twitter: Collins Hillary
Get in Touch: collinshillary1@gmail.com
My Portfolio: Collins Hillary
Developer Experience Tool Listing Platform: DevEx Tools.
Together, we can make the open payments revolution more accessible than ever before. Let’s build the future of interoperability, one Rafiki instance at a time!
Top comments (6)
Congratulations on the Rafiki launch!!! I can't wait to play with it and get payments set up!
Hey Jan, thank you! Try it out with the link in the article. Your feedback and support mean the world to us.
Interesting! Great to see Rafiki-related contributions coming from outside the Interledger Foundation.
What is the link to the repository?
Is there something about what you have built that could be contributed to the Rafiki documentation or directly to the project instead of a separate thing?
Thank you! I’m glad to see the enthusiasm around this contribution. The Rafiki Lanchpad Tool is indeed completely open-source, and you can check it out on GitHub here
Regarding contributing to the Rafiki documentation or project directly, that’s an idea I’m excited about.
This is our current thought process, for the Rafiki documentation, especially around the "Deployment" and "Testing Locally" sections, we can include this tool as an alternative step for those who want to quickly deploy an instance and start interacting with the admin API's immediately.
For the main Rafiki project, we can include this tool as part of the repo and allow users to run this tool independently on their local machines.
The tool already had 30+ interactions, we'd love to collaborate with the community and Interledger Foundation to identify the best way to integrate these ideas into the core Rafiki project or its documentation. I am looking forward to feedback and further collaboration!
I think this could be useful for developers or enthusiasts to explore Rafiki via its UI.
However, Rafiki should only be used by regulated financial institutions, which must have the technical capability to integrate Rafiki securely with their existing internal services for accounts, authentication, exchange rates, and liquidity.
Rafiki is meant to live alongside an account servicing entity's existing infrastructure. For organizations using Kubernetes, the Helm charts should make deploying Rafiki straightforward for both dev and production.
This is why I suggest you send a pull request to the Rafiki repository with any documentation changes that would have made getting it running in your dev or production environments easier. If you're not using Kubernetes and Helm, it would be useful to know what methods your organization uses for managing dev and production environments.
Thank you for your feedback. You're right that Rafiki is ideally suited for integration with an ASE's existing infrastructure, and Kubernetes with Helm charts does simplify deployment for those leveraging such setups.
The Rafiki Launchpad is designed to be efficient for development and testing purposes, enabling users to quickly spin up instances and explore Rafiki’s features through its UI. However, the tool is also versatile and can be extended to support production deployments directly into an ASE's Kubernetes environment.
The vision is to provide a seamless bridge for developers and regulated institutions, by tailoring the Launchpad's capabilities for both development and production environments.
Regarding documentation, we’ll work on submitting a pull request with the addition of having the tool as part of the test locally or another menu entry, if that's acceptable.