How-to: Interact with SNS canisters

This article explains how to interact with the canisters of SNS-1. It can also serve as an explanation of how to interact with an SNS and the dapp canisters it controls more generally.

What is SNS-1

SNS-1 is envisaged to be the first SNS DAO to be created on the Internet Computer. Symbolically we propose for the SNS-1 to be an experimental DAO owned and driven by the IC community. At conception, it consists only as a blank canvas for the community to paint the future upon. It signifies the beginning, an exemplar to experiment & educate with, and a beacon to inspire a community of SNSs. The dapp the SNS-1 DAO initially controls can be found here. Initially it just points to an immutable letter stored on a blackholed canister.

Finding all SNS and dapp canisters

If you want to interact with a dapp and the SNS DAO that governs the dapp, you likely know either the dapp canister ID or the SNS root canister ID by which an SNS is identified. We first describe how, starting from SNS root canister ID, you can find and interact with all SNS and dapp canisters.

Finding all SNS and dapp canisters - starting from SNS

Get the SNS root canister

The SNS root canister is the SNS canister that knows about and controls all the other SNS canisters and the dapp canisters. Therefore it is the canister by which an SNS can be identified. Given this canister ID you can verify it is indeed an “official SNS” that runs a SNS wasm that has been vetted by the NNS. All SNS root canisters, and thus all SNSs, are listed in the NNS canister called SNS wasm modules canister, or SNS-W for short. SNS-W is a fixed canister ID in the NNS subnet and its canister ID is qaa6y-5yaaa-aaaaa-aaafa-cai. Call the method list_deployed_snses and find all root canister IDs in the returned list. You can now check that the SNS root canister ID you knew is one of them.

Dashboard. In the SNS-W canister interface, navigate to the SNS-W canister, for example by entering its ID in the search bar. You will get to a page that summarises this canister and all its methods. Click ‘+’ next to list_deployed_snses, and then click “Call”. As SNS-1 is the first SNS, this list only contains one SNS record, where the root_canister_id is zxeu2-7aaaa-aaaaq-aaafa-cai.

Get all SNS and dapp canister IDs

From the last step, you know that the root canister ID has been verified as a “true” SNS root canister ID deployed through the blessed canister wasm path. You can next get the rest of the canister IDs associated with that SNS by calling list_sns_canisters on the SNS root canister. This list contains a list of all canisters that collectively make up the SNS. The response from this method also has a “dapps” entry that lists the dapp canisters that are governed by the SNS.

Dashboard. On the dashboard, enter the canister ID of SNS root in the search tab. You should see all the methods of SNS root now. Similarly to the last step, click ‘+’ next to list_sns_canisters, and then click “Call”. This will return the canister IDs of all SNS canisters and the dapp canisters.

Get the summary of all SNS and dapp canisters

Finally, you can get the summary and ownership graph of the SNS including the dapps. To do so, call get_sns_canisters_summary on the SNS root canister. This will return the status of each canister in the SNS, including information such as the canister’s controller and cycles balance. \

Dashboard. On the dashboard, where you should still be in the SNS root canister interface from the last Step, click ‘+’ next to get_sns_canisters_summary. You see the option to choose an argument, but you don't have to select this. Click “Call”.

Verify the controller hierarchy

In an SNS, the control hierarchy is as follows. The SNS root canister controls all SNS canisters, except for the swap canister that implements the decentralization sale and which is controlled by the NNS root canister. The SNS root canister also controls the dapp canisters that are governed by the NNS. Thus you can check that all canister's controller except swap is SNS root (zxeu2-7aaaa-aaaaq-aaafa-cai in SNS-1) and that the swap canister's controller is NNS root r7inp-6aaaa-aaaaa-aaabq-cai. The swap cansiter also has itself as a controller for technical reasons. Finally, the SNS root canister itself is controlled by the SNS governance canister (zqfso-syaaa-aaaaq-aaafq-cai in SNS-1).

Dashboard. You can verify all of this by inspecting what you received in get_sns_canisters_summary in the last step or you can search for the individual canister IDs, which will lead you to an overview page for each canister, where the controllers are summarised on top.

Finding all SNS and dapp canisters - starting from the dapp

If you have a dapp canister ID, you can first query the canister to find its controller. If the dapp is controlled by an SNS, then this will return you the SNS root canister ID and you can then proceed as explained in the section above.

Inspecting the SNS canisters

+++++++++ On the dashboard, navigate to the SNS governance canister by entering the canister ID in the search bar. Then, click ‘+’ next to get_sns_initialization_parameters, and click “Call”.

List the neurons that exist in SNS Governance. Before the decentralization sale finishes, the only neurons are the developer and airdrop neurons. Thus, you can look at all neurons and see that they match the initialization that you saw in Step 1.

On the dashboard, navigate to the SNS governance canister by entering the canister ID in the search bar. Then, click ‘+’ next to list_neurons, and click “Call”.

Check out how many tokens are sold in the decentralization sale. As long as the SNS has not launched yet, there are some tokens reserved for the SNS decentralization sale. They are stored in the SNS ledger account that is owned by the SNS sale canister (previously called swap). Thus, to learn how many tokens are in the decentralization sale, call icrc1_balance_of to get the balance of the Swap canister. The returned value is given in fractions of 10E-8 of an SNS token.

On the dashboard, navigate to the SNS ledger canister by entering the canister ID in the search bar. Then, click ‘+’ next to icrc1_balance_of, and provide as the argument the ID of the SNS ledger canister. Then press call.

Learn how much tokens are in the SNS treasury. The SNS treasury is a SNS ledger account that is owned by SNS governance. Specifically, it is on a defined subaccount of the SNS governance’s ledger account. To learn it, use icrc1_balance_of to get the balance of the SNS ledger account with the following arguments:

On the dashboard, navigate to the SNS ledger canister by entering the canister ID in the search bar. Then, click ‘+’ next to icrc1_balance_of, and provide as the argument TODO. Then press “Call”.