mango-explorer/docs/MarketmakerDelegation.md

🥭 Mango Explorer

🔥 Delegation

Mango Account Delegation is a feature that allows a separate account limited access to the Mango Account's features.

A delegated account can, for example:

• Deposit funds
• Place orders
• Cancel orders

A delegated account cannot, for example:

• Withdraw funds
• Close the Mango Account

Using a delegate account allows you to keep your powerful Mango Account keys off your server (and possibly in a hardware or cold wallet) and use a more limited delegated account to sign and pay for transactions.

This walkthrough will show you how to set up delegation for a Mango Account used by a marketmaker.

1. Create An 'AccountRunner' Account

First thing to do - create the Solana 'account runner' account. This is the limited-privilege account that will sign and pay SOL for your marketmaker transactions, but won't be able to withdraw tokens.

Let's be fancy and ask for an account whose address starts with 'Dgt' so we can remember it's a delegate account. Run the command:

solana-keygen grind --starts-with Dgt:1

This should give a response like:

Searching with 8 threads for:
	1 pubkey that starts with 'Dgt' and ends with ''
Wrote keypair to DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y.json

The account address your command generates will (obviously) be different, but this walkthrough will use DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y as the Delegate Account address, and Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ as the Mango Account address. Substitute your own delegate and mango account addresses in commands.

2. Fund 'AccountRunner' Account

The marketmaker will be 'running' as this account. Since the delegate account will be signing transactions, it needs SOL to pay the transaction fees.

There are lots of ways to transfer SOL to the account runner. Most folks will probably use Phantom or Sollet to send SOL, and that works just fine.

Here we'll use a command to transfer 1 SOL since that's simpler to show:

Run as whatever account has the SOL you want to send

send-sols --address DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y --quantity 1

3. Set 'AccountRunner' As Delegate

A Mango Account can have at most one delegate. This command will grant the Delegate Account limited access to the Mango Account, removing any existing delegate on that Mango Account:

Run as Owner of the Mango Account

delegate-account --account-address Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ --delegate-address DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y

4. Verify 'AccountRunner' Is Shown As Delegate

It's always worth checking to see if the command worked as expected. If you examine the account now, you should see DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y listed as the delegate.

Run as Owner of the Mango Account

show-accounts

This should sow the address of the AccountRunner Delegate in the 'Delegated To' line (abridged):

« Account (un-named), Version.V3 [Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ]
...
    Delegated To: DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y
...

(If it doesn't show DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y in the 'Delegated To:' line, something has probably gone wrong with Step 3 above.)

5. Update Marketmaker Account Credentials

The marketmaker needs to load the 'AccountRunner' secret keys now instead of the Mango Account owner's secret keys.

What needs to be done here depends greatly on how you are currently loading the secret keys.

IMPORTANT! Take a backup of your current Mango Account owner credentials and keep that backup safe! If you lose access to these credentials you will lose access to your Mango Account. These are the keys that allow you to close your Mango Account and withdraw tokens from it - this is the account you need to keep safe! We're using a delegate account here specifically so we can protect these credentials and get them off the marketmaker server!

For instance, if you followed the Marketmaking Quickstart, you would:

• take a copy of your current ~/mango-explorer/id.json file.
• keep that copy safe, preferably not on the server running your marketmaker.
• copy your new DgtBbuXgmmdHvbcXusQWFmJPToCo1Ump3E3h8scP3A7y.json file to ~/mango-explorer/id.json, overwriting the old contents.

6. Update Marketmaker Command

The marketmaker needs to be told which Mango Account to use. The AccountRunner delegate account has no Mango Accounts of its own (probably...) so it won't automatically find the right account to work with. We need to explicitly tell the marketmaker which Mango Account address to use.

This is done by passing the --account-address parameter.

To tell your marketmaker to load the Mango Account Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ, update the command used to start your marketmaker with the following:

--account-address Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ

7. Run Your Marketmaker!

That's it - your marketmaker should now be configured to run using a lower-privilege Account Runner delegate account.

You can still use your Mango Account owner credentials to manage your Mango Account and withdraw tokens, but the day-to-day running of the marketmaker transactions can be done using the Account Runner delegate account. (Remember to keep it topped up with enough SOL)

(Optional) Revoke Delegation

If you want to disable the Account Runner's ability to trade using your Mango Account, you can revoke its access:

Run as Owner of the Mango Account

delegate-account --account-address Mngpjk8KJR5uPs6UvYefvzReahdjTeYcqKin1WgVGNZ --revoke

This will return the account to its regular state where only the Mango Account owner can use it.