How to make a transaction

Pre-requisites

Old transaction workflow

Assuming you have already created a wallet, you can send a transaction by using the following endpoint:

Behind the scene, the wallet engine will select necessary inputs from the wallet, generate a change address within the wallet, sign and submit the transaction. A transaction can have multiple outputs, possibly to the same address. Note that in Byron, addresses are necessarily base58-encoded (as an enforced convention).

New transaction workflow

New transaction workflow decouples creation of the transaction into separate steps:

Behind the scene, on the construct step, the wallet engine will select necessary inputs belonging to the wallet, generate a change address of the wallet and calculate the fee for this particular transaction.

Sign and submit are now invoked as separate steps. This allows for presenting the actual transaction fee to the end user. In the old workflow, when all those steps where done in one go, showing precise fee was not possible and it had to be estimated using separate wallet endpoint. Because of the random nature of coin-selection algorithm such estimation might not have been always the same as the actual transaction fee.

Here is very basic example sending out 10₳ and 1 asset from the wallet:

  • Construct. 
$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/v2/wallets/1b0aa24994b4181e79116c131510f2abf6cdaa4f/transactions-construct \  
-d '{"payments":
[{"address":"addr_test1qrv60y8vwu8cke6j83tgkfjttmtv0ytfvnhggp6f4gl5kf0l0dw5r75vk42mv3ykq8vyjeaanvpytg79xqzymqy5acmq5k85dg",
"amount":{"quantity":10000000,"unit":"lovelace"},
"assets":[{"policy_id":"b518eee977e1c8e3ce020e745be63b8b14498c565f5b59653e104ec7",
           "asset_name":"4163757374696330",
           "quantity":1}]}]}' \  
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
  • Sign.

ℹ️ The response from construct will give us information like fee or coin selection details. It also returns a CBOR-encoded transaction represented in base64 encoding. This is what we need to feed into sign’s payload. 

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/v2/wallets/1b0aa24994b4181e79116c131510f2abf6cdaa4f/transactions-sign \  
-d '{"passphrase":"Secure Passphrase",
     "transaction":"hKYAgYJYIJs6ATvbNwo5xpOkjHfUzr9Cv4zuFLFicFwWwpPC4ltBBQ2AAYKCWDkA0Tt2d1mVEvi5ZUp1k6RAHcWWqmNX0+gr0ea9nv97XUH6jLVVtkSWAdhJZ72bAkWjxTAETYCU7jaCGgCYloChWBy1GO7pd+HI484CDnRb5juLFEmMVl9bWWU+EE7HoUhBY3VzdGljMAGCWDkAILE1lnWHTaOk26BI/mHKGcjdgw9DcIsWT4W0YxcKHXESwr9eLTleQaAYVejg2GktTDXVp7ygo4CCGrYB1PChWBy1GO7pd+HI484CDnRb5juLFEmMVl9bWWU+EE7Hp0hBY3VzdGljMQFIQWN1c3RpYzIBSEFjdXN0aWM0AURCYXNzBUVEcnVtcwZJRHJ1bXNPbmx5AUhFbGVjdHJpYwYCGgAC2VUDGgMDcO8OgKD19g=="}' \  
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
  • Submit.

ℹ️ Again, we are feeding submit’s payload with CBOR-encoded transaction returned by sign request. 

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/v2/wallets/1b0aa24994b4181e79116c131510f2abf6cdaa4f/transactions-submit \  
-d '{"transaction":"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"}' \  
-H "Content-Type: application/json"

{
  "id": "35dd9db1f61822ac82f4690ea4fe12426bf6e534aff8e13563fce55a4d502772"
}

We can monitor status of submitted transaction using GET /wallets/{walletId}/transactions/{transactionId} endpoint. 

$ curl -X GET http://localhost:8090/v2/wallets/1b0aa24994b4181e79116c131510f2abf6cdaa4f/transactions/35dd9db1f61822ac82f4690ea4fe12426bf6e534aff8e13563fce55a4d502772 | jq

{
  "inserted_at": {
    "height": {
      "quantity": 2975821,
      "unit": "block"
    },
    "time": "2021-10-08T11:25:32Z",
    "epoch_number": 161,
    "absolute_slot_number": 39323116,
    "slot_number": 140716
  },
  "status": "in_ledger",
....

Transaction history

Note that all transactions made from and to any wallet are available in the transaction history. We can always display details of a particular transaction as well as list all transactions that are known to a wallet.

For instance, transactions can be tracked via:

Which returns a list of all transactions for this particular wallet. Optional range filters can be provided. A transaction will go through a succession of states, starting as “Pending”. If a transaction stays pending for too long (because rejected by a mempool, or because lost in translation due to multiple chain switches), users may decide to forget it using:

For more information about transactions lifecycle, have a look at Transaction Lifecycle.

Signed and serialized transactions

Alternatively, cardano-wallet allows clients to submit already signed and serialized transactions as a raw bytes blob. This can be done by submitting such serialized data as an application/octet-stream :

POST /proxy/transactions

In this scenario, the server engine will verify that the transaction is structurally well-formed and forward it to the node instance associated with it. If the transaction belongs to a known wallet, it will eventually show up in the wallet.

Links to this page
  • Managing native assets

    I should receive CBOR-encoded transaction, fee and coin_selection details in response. I can now sign and submit such a transaction just like in How to make a transaction.

    That’s it! I should now receive CBOR-encoded transaction, fee and coin_selection details in response. I can now sign and submit such a transaction just like in How to make a transaction. After the transaction has been submitted, your freshly-minted NFT should appear in your wallet balance!

    That’s it. I can now sign and submit such transaction just like in How to make a transaction and as a result my NFT will just disappear.

  • Delegation

    After constructing a transaction that undelegates from a stake pool, I should receive a CBOR-encoded transaction, fee, and coin_selection in the response. I can now sign and submit such a transaction just like in How to make a transaction.

    Refer to How to make a transaction for details on signing and submitting it to the network.

    ℹ️ Note that information about deposit_taken and deposit_returned is available in the wallet transaction history. Refer to How to make a transaction.

    ℹ️ Note that information about withdrawals is also available in the wallet transaction history. Refer to How to make a transaction.