kraken-sockets

Overview

kraken-sockets is a Python library that provides a clean, decorator-based interface to Kraken’s WebSocket API v2. It handles real-time market data subscriptions including tickers, trades, order books, OHLC data, and more — as well as authenticated private endpoints for orders, balances, and executions.

Rationale

Kraken’s WebSocket API is powerful but working with raw WebSocket connections requires significant boilerplate — connection management, message parsing, authentication token handling, and subscription lifecycle management. kraken-sockets wraps all of this into a simple decorator pattern where you define handler functions for specific response types and the library handles the rest.

Technicals

Language: Python
Architecture: Async event loop with decorator-based trigger system
Dependencies: asyncio, websockets, Pydantic schemas for request/response validation
Auth: Environment variable-based API key configuration for private endpoints
Distribution: Published on PyPI as kraken-sockets

Features

WebSocket v2 API connection management
Decorator-based trigger system (@kraken.trigger)
Market data subscriptions (ticker, trades, book, OHLC, instruments)
Typed request/response schemas with Pydantic
Custom logging handler support
Custom async task injection
Private endpoint authentication
Order placement and management via WebSocket
Reconnection and retry logic

Lessons Learned

Coming soon.

Future