Production Deployment

Take a self-hosted instance from localhost to production.

A production explorer needs TLS, a stable database, and enough headroom for indexing under load. This guide covers the essentials.

Architecture for production

                ┌─────────────┐
   HTTPS ──────▶│ Reverse proxy│ (nginx / Caddy / Traefik)
                └──────┬──────┘
          ┌────────────┼────────────┐
          ▼            ▼            ▼
      Frontend     API/backend   (static)
                     │
                ┌────┴────┐
                ▼         ▼
           PostgreSQL   Chain RPC node

• Reverse proxy terminates TLS and routes /api to the backend and everything else to the frontend.
• PostgreSQL runs with persistent storage, regular backups, and preferably on separate disks from the OS.
• RPC node runs on dedicated hardware for busy chains — the indexer’s trace calls are heavy.

TLS and reverse proxy

Example nginx server block:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name explorer.example.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/explorer.example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/explorer.example.com/privkey.pem;

    location /api/ {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_read_timeout 60s;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }
}

Caddy is a zero-config alternative:

explorer.example.com

reverse_proxy /api/* 127.0.0.1:4000
reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:3000

Update the frontend env to the public hostname (NEXT_PUBLIC_API_HOST=explorer.example.com) and recreate the frontend container.

Database

• Persistence: mount a volume for PostgreSQL data (-v pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data). Never run production without it.
• Sizing: a full mainnet index with internal transactions can reach hundreds of GB. Plan for growth and use fast NVMe storage.
• Backups: schedule pg_dump or filesystem snapshots; test restores. See Maintenance & Operations.
• Connection limits: the indexer holds many connections; raise max_connections (e.g. 200) on busy instances.

Scaling

The indexer itself is a singleton — do not run two indexer processes against the same database.

Resource guidance

Security checklist

• TLS everywhere; redirect HTTP to HTTPS
• Database not exposed to the public internet
• Strong DATABASE_URL credentials
• Rate limits configured (API_RATE_LIMIT)
• OS and container images patched; automatic security updates on
• Backups scheduled and restore-tested

Multiple chains

Run one compose stack per chain, each with its own database volume, ports, and hostname (e.g. explorer-xdc.example.com, explorer-testnet.example.com). A single reverse proxy can front all of them.

Next steps

• Maintenance & Operations — upgrades, reindexing, backups
• Monitoring — health checks and metrics
• Operations Command Reference