Cardano CLI Starter Kit

This starter kit shows how to execute common operations against the Cardano blockchain using the official command-line tool called cardano-cli.

Dev Environment

For running this starter kit you'll need access to a fully synced instance of a Cardano Node and the cardano-cli binary.

If you don't want to install the required components yourself, you can use the Demeter.run platform to create a cloud environment with access to common Cardano infrastructure. The following button will open this repo in a private, web-based VSCode IDE with access to a shared Cardano Node and a pre-installed binary of the cardano-cli.

Navigating the Starter Kit

This starter kit includes an interactive Jupyter notebook tutorial (TUTORIAL.ipynb) that walks you through:

• Creating addresses and wallets
• Building and submitting transactions
• Minting native assets (tokens)

Open TUTORIAL.ipynb in VSCode to get started with the step-by-step guide.

Screen Layout

We recommend splitting your editor into two panes: the tutorial notebook on the left and a terminal on the right.

You can execute the code cells directly in the notebook, or copy commands into the terminal for immediate feedback.

Cardano Node Access

Since you're running this starter kit from a Cardano Workspace, you already have access to the required infrastructure, such as the Cardano Node. All the required binaries are pre-installed by default, including the cardano-cli.

The network you're connected to (mainnet, preview, preprod, etc) is defined by your project's configuration, selected when creating your environment.

To simplify the process, Cardano Workspaces come pre-configured with environment variables that allow you to connect to the node without extra steps. These are the variables relevant for this tutorial:

• CARDANO_NODE_SOCKET_PATH: the location of the unix socket where the Cardano node is listening
• CARDANO_NODE_MAGIC: the network magic corresponding to the connected node

To verify your connection to the node, run the following command to query the current tip:

cardano-cli query tip --testnet-magic $CARDANO_NODE_MAGIC

If everything works correctly, you should see output similar to this:

{
    "block": 4045465,
    "epoch": 248,
    "era": "Conway",
    "hash": "f21698559c893bdd86a3e0b237515cef01c1b2283f16fc205bfe370e4b69feed",
    "slot": 105641870,
    "slotInEpoch": 147470,
    "slotsToEpochEnd": 284530,
    "syncProgress": "100.00"
}