Rakurai Tips — FAQ

Frequently asked questions about how tips work on Rakurai validators: sending tips, transaction prioritization, and distribution.

Audience: Searchers, traders, and integrators sending tips to Rakurai validators.

See also: Transaction inclusion · Programs hub · Tip Manager program

Reference: Rakurai Tip Manager program · Full IDL on GitHub

1. What are tips?

Tips help traders and searchers land bundles (or transactions) on Rakurai nodes. Bundles (or transactions) that pay higher tips are generally prioritized over those that pay lower tips.

Note: Tips are not a replacement for priority fees. The Rakurai implementation does not allow cannibalization of priority fees.

2. How are tips transferred?

2.1. Sending a tip

Tips are plain SOL transfers to one of the eight Rakurai tip accounts. No special program instruction is required to send a tip — include a SystemProgram.transfer in your transaction (or bundle) that moves lamports from your wallet to any of the eight tip PDAs listed in the appendix.

Why eight accounts? Write-lock contention. If every tipper hit a single account, transactions would serialize on that account lock. Eight parallel tip accounts let many tippers land simultaneously.

3. How do tips prioritize my transaction?

When your transaction includes a SOL transfer to a Rakurai tip account, that transfer amount is the tip signal the scheduler uses to prioritize your transaction (or bundle).

3.1. What you should do

1. Include the tip inside your transaction (or bundle) as a SystemProgram.transfer to one of the eight Rakurai tip accounts.
2. Higher tip → higher scheduling priority when the current slot leader is running the Rakurai scheduler. The scheduler weighs reward (tip + fees) relative to estimated compute cost, similar to Solana's standard priority formula: transactions that pay more per compute unit are prioritized.

3.2. What tips do not do

1. A tip is not a replacement for regular priority fees. If a transaction has very low priority fees and a very high tip, tip-based prioritization will be less significant.
2. Tips are independent of Solana's base transaction fee and prioritization fee — they are an additional incentive for validators.

4. Can I use my own tip account instead of Rakurai's eight accounts?

The preferred mechanism is to send tips to Rakurai's tip accounts. However, for the time being, if you need to receive tips in your own account(s), you can contact the Rakurai team to configure your custom tip accounts.

4.1. How it works

1. Register your account — provide your tip account addresses (e.g., ABC...DEF) to the Rakurai team and agree on a commission percentage you will share with Rakurai (e.g., 30%).
2. Rakurai adds your account to the validator flow — the team configures the system so that tips sent to your custom account are recognized by the Rakurai scheduler. Validators have control over which tip accounts are effective through Admin RPC.
3. Prioritization — when someone tips your custom account, the agreed Rakurai share (e.g., 30%) is used by the scheduler to prioritize the transaction, the same way standard Rakurai tip accounts work.
4. Settlement — after the epoch ends, you transfer the agreed Rakurai share. That share is routed to the RCA of the validator who processed the transaction, following the same distribution flow described in §6.

5. How are tips accumulated?

On every Rakurai leader turn, the validator client automatically submits a change_tip_receiver transaction that:

1. Drains all eight tip accounts (lamports above rent exemption from the previous leader period).
2. Transfers Rakurai's commission % to the Rakurai commission account.
3. Transfers the remaining share to the validator's epoch-specific RCA.

6. How are tips distributed?

Tip distribution happens in two stages:

6.1. Leader-turn split (every leader turn)

On every Rakurai leader turn, the claim transaction drains tips from the previous leader period. Rakurai's share is transferred to the Rakurai commission account — the commission percentage is set on-chain via the Tip Manager config account. The remaining share goes to the validator's epoch-specific Reward Collection Account (RCA).

6.2. Post-epoch distribution (after epoch end)

After the epoch ends, the validator's share of tips is transferred to the validator identity account.

If any custom tip accounts are configured, external tip account holders must first transfer their agreed Rakurai share. Once all external shares are settled, distribution is triggered. If a custom tip account holder does not settle the agreed share within one epoch, their account stops being used for prioritization starting from the next epoch (one-epoch grace period).

7. Common questions

Q7.1: Do I need to interact with the Tip Manager program to send a tip?
A: No. A normal SOL transfer to any of the eight tip accounts is sufficient.

Q7.2: Can I tip multiple accounts in one transaction?
A: Yes, but one transfer to one tip account is typical. Multiple transfers to the same account in one tx still accumulate correctly.

Q7.3: What happens if tips are never claimed?
A: They remain in the tip PDAs until the next Rakurai validator leader turn, when the validator runs change_tip_receiver.

Q7.4: Where does the validator's tip share go?
A: The validator's share is transferred to the epoch-specific RCA on every leader turn. After the epoch ends, it is transferred to the validator identity account.

Q7.5: How is this different from a priority fee?
A: Priority fees are paid through Solana's native fee mechanism. Rakurai tips are direct SOL transfers to tip PDAs that are used by the Rakurai scheduler to prioritize traders' and searchers' bundles. Bundles with higher tips are generally scheduled before bundles with lower tips.

Q7.6: Can I use a custom tip account instead of the eight Rakurai accounts?
A: For the time being, yes. Contact the Rakurai team to register your own tip account and configure a commission share. See §4 for details.

Q7.7: Where can I see the Tip Manager IDL?
A: See the Tip Manager program guide for a link to the IDL file with exact instruction and account layouts.

Appendix: Program and tip account addresses