Waves Blockchain ID Specification

Abstract

In CAIP-2 a general blockchain identification scheme is defined. This is the implementation of CAIP-2 for Waves network.

Specification

Syntax

Blockchains in the “waves” namespace are identified by their chain ID.

Chain ID format is a signed integer in decimal representation. The signed integer is represented as a one-byte signed integer in the range [-128..127].

chainId:    namespace + ":" + reference
namespace:  waves
reference:  integer in the range [-128..127], padded to 3 chars with leading 0s

If the value is shorter than 3 characters (negative sign included), then it must be padded with enough leading zeros to reach 3 characters, i.e. -69 or 007.

Resolution method

There is no in-protocol resolution method at present. But there is a solution for some cases where it might be needed.

To resolve a blockchain reference for the Waves namespace, make a GET HTTP request /addresses to the blockchain node, for example:

• GET https://nodes-testnet.wavesnodes.com/addresses

The node will return in response an array of its public blockchain addresses, for example:

[
  "3NA4UdyFVv7v1J6UgGe4moyHm2fambavqvm",
  "3MvbutkV3xapQVUcGBGWCongwfdH8LKTm8w"
]

Decode any of them as Base58 string and take the second byte from the resulting array, for example (in pseudocode):

byte getChainId(String address) {
    byte[] decodedAddress = decodeBase58(address);
    return decodedAddress[1];
}

This byte is the chain ID of the blockchain where this node is running.

Rationale

The chain ID is specified as a one-byte signed integer.

For example, the chain ID of Mainnet is 87 (ASCII code of “W”).

There may also be other custom networks based on Waves, but with a different chain ID.

Chain ID is used in binary format in the addressing representations of all entities in the namespace, namely:

• Block
• Transaction
• Order
• Address
• Alias

Therefore, these entities cannot be used on another network with different chain ID.

Test Cases

This is a list of manually composed examples

# Waves Mainnet
waves:087

# Waves Testnet
waves:084

# Waves Stagenet
waves:083

# Waves custom network used in the [private node Docker image][]
waves:082

# Waves custom network with a negative Chain ID
waves:-07

Links

• About Chain ID in Waves Documentation
• About binary format of blockchain entities

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

Citation

Please cite this document as:

Maxim Smolyakov, Yury Sidorov, "namespaces/: Waves Blockchain ID Specification [DRAFT]," Chain Agnostic Namespaces, , January 2023 / . [Online serial]. Available: https://github.com/ChainAgnostic/namespaces/.md