Ink is a cutting-edge Layer 2 blockchain solution developed by Kraken, designed to bridge centralized and decentralized finance. Built on the OP Stack within the Optimism Superchain ecosystem, Ink offers sub-second block times, optimized gas fees, and high performance. It aims to simplify DeFi access, leveraging Kraken’s established infrastructure while inheriting Ethereum’s robust security.

The Ink API allows interaction with the Ink network through a set of JSON-RPC methods. Its design is familiar to developers who have worked with Ethereum’s JSON-RPC APIs, making it intuitive and straightforward to use.

Send Your First Request on Alchemy

Let’s use the viem package to create an Ink client connected to Alchemy and fetch the latest block number!

npm install --save viem

Create Client Connected to Alchemy

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import { createPublicClient, http } from "viem"; 
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import { ink } from "viem/chains";
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const client = createPublicClient({
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  chain: ink,
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  transport: http("https://ink-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/YOUR_ALCHEMY_API_KEY"),
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});

Now that you’ve created a client connected to Alchemy, you can continue with some basics:

Get Latest Block Number

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const blockNumber = await client.getBlockNumber();
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console.log("Current block number:", blockNumber);

Get an Address Balance

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const balance = await client.getBalance({ address: "0xab5801a7d398351b8be11c439e05c5b3259aec9b" });
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console.log("Balance (ETH):", Number(balance) / 1e18);

Read Block Data

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const block = await client.getBlock({
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  blockNumber: blockNumber, // from previous example
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});
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console.log(block);

Fetch a Transaction by Hash

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const tx = await client.getTransaction({ hash: "0xYOUR_TX_HASH" });
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console.log(tx);

Fetch Transaction Receipt

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const receipt = await client.getTransactionReceipt({
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  hash: "0xYOUR_TX_HASH"
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});
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console.log(receipt);

Ink APIs

For the full list of Ink APIs, see the Ink API Endpoints.