Skip to main content

Create an Asset on the X-Chain

This example creates an asset on the X-Chain and publishes it to the Avalanche platform. The first step in this process is to create an instance of AvalancheJS connected to our Avalanche platform endpoint of choice. In this example we're using the local network 12345 via Avash. The code examples are written in typescript. The script is in full, in both typescript and javascript, after the individual steps. The whole example can be found here.

import { Avalanche, BN, Buffer } from "avalanche"
import {
  AVMAPI,
  KeyChain,
  UTXOSet,
  UnsignedTx,
  Tx,
  InitialStates,
  SECPMintOutput,
  SECPTransferOutput
} from "avalanche/dist/apis/avm"
import {
  PrivateKeyPrefix,
  DefaultLocalGenesisPrivateKey
} from "avalanche/dist/utils"

const ip: string = "localhost"
const port: number = 9650
const protocol: string = "http"
const networkID: number = 12345 // Default is 1, we want to override that for our local network
const avalanche: Avalanche = new Avalanche(ip, port, protocol, networkID)

Import the local network's pre-funded address​

Next we get an instance of the X-Chain local keychain. The local network 12345 has a pre-funded address which you can access with the private key PrivateKey-ewoqjP7PxY4yr3iLTpLisriqt94hdyDFNgchSxGGztUrTXtNN which can be referenced from ${PrivateKeyPrefix}${DefaultLocalGenesisPrivateKey}. Lastly get the pre-funded address as a Buffer and as a string.

const xchain: AVMAPI = avalanche.XChain()
const xKeychain: KeyChain = xchain.keyChain()
const privKey: string = `${PrivateKeyPrefix}${DefaultLocalGenesisPrivateKey}`
xKeychain.importKey(privKey)
const xAddresses: Buffer[] = xchain.keyChain().getAddresses()
const xAddressStrings: string[] = xchain.keyChain().getAddressStrings()

Prepare for the Mint Output​

Now we need to create an empty array for the SECPMintOutput. We also need a threshold and locktime for the outputs which we're going to create. Each X-Chain transaction can can contain a memo field of up to 256 bytes of arbitrary data.

const outputs: SECPMintOutput[] = []
const threshold: number = 1
const locktime: BN = new BN(0)
const memo: Buffer = Buffer.from(
  "AVM utility method buildCreateAssetTx to create an ANT"
)

Describe the new asset​

The first step in creating a new asset using AvalancheJS is to determine the qualities of the asset. We will give the asset a name, a ticker symbol, as well as a denomination.

const name: string = "TestToken"
const symbol: string = "TEST"
const denomination: number = 3

Set up async/await​

The remaining code will be encapsulated by this main function so that we can use the async / await pattern.

const main = async (): Promise<any> => {}
main()

Fetch the UTXO​

Pass the xAddressStrings to xchain.getUTXOs to fetch the UTXO.

const avmUTXOResponse: any = await xchain.getUTXOs(xAddressStrings)
const utxoSet: UTXOSet = avmUTXOResponse.utxos

Creating the initial state​

We want to mint an asset with 507 units held by the managed key. This sets up the state that will result from the Create Asset transaction.

// Create outputs for the asset's initial state
const amount: BN = new BN(507)
const vcapSecpOutput: SECPTransferOutput  = new SECPTransferOutput(
  amount,
  xAddresses,
  locktime,
  threshold
)
const initialStates: InitialStates = new InitialStates()

// Populate the initialStates with the outputs
initialStates.addOutput(vcapSecpOutput)

Create the Mint Output​

We also want to create a SECPMintOutput so that we can mint more of this asset later.

const secpMintOutput: SECPMintOutput = new SECPMintOutput(
  xAddresses,
  locktime,
  threshold
)
outputs.push(secpMintOutput)

Creating the signed transaction​

Now that we know what we want an asset to look like, we create a transaction to send to the network. There is an AVM helper function buildCreateAssetTx() which does just that.

const unsignedTx: UnsignedTx = await xchain.buildCreateAssetTx(
  utxoSet,
  xAddressStrings,
  xAddressStrings,
  initialStates,
  name,
  symbol,
  denomination,
  outputs,
  memo
)

Sign and issue the transaction​

Now let's sign the transaction and issue it to the Avalanche network. If successful it will return a CB58 serialized string for the transaction ID.

Now that we have a signed transaction ready to send to the network, let’s issue it!

const tx: Tx = unsignedTx.sign(xKeychain)
const txid: string = await xchain.issueTx(tx)
console.log(`Success! TXID: ${txid}`)

Get the status of the transaction​

Now that we sent the transaction to the network, it takes a few seconds to determine if the transaction has gone through. We can get an updated status on the transaction using the transaction ID through the AVM API.

// returns one of: "Accepted", "Processing", "Unknown", and "Rejected"
const status: string = await xchain.getTxStatus(id)

The statuses can be one of "Accepted", "Processing", "Unknown", and "Rejected":

  • "Accepted" indicates that the transaction has been accepted as valid by the network and executed
  • "Processing" indicates that the transaction is being voted on.
  • "Unknown" indicates that node knows nothing about the transaction, indicating the node doesn’t have it
  • "Rejected" indicates the node knows about the transaction, but it conflicted with an accepted transaction

Identifying the newly created asset​

The X-Chain uses the transaction ID of the transaction which created the asset as the unique identifier for the asset. This unique identifier is henceforth known as the "AssetID" of the asset. When assets are traded around the X-Chain, they always reference the AssetID that they represent.