Use Sidecar

This how-to guide illustrates using REST endpoints provided by the sidecar service to interact with a Substrate blockchain node.

To find the winner of a completed auction we will need to know the block number the auction ended at. Since Sidecar is a stateless API and the auction info is stored at the final block of an auction, once the auction is over we need the block number to make historic queries to retrieve the event and data stored in it.

Goal

Find the winner of a completed parachain auction using sidecar

Use Cases

Interact with a Substrate blockchain node using a REST service.

Steps

1. Leverage the /experimental/paras/auctions/current endpoint

We will track and store finishEnd, auctionIndex, and leasePeriods in a Database:

• finishEnd: This is the last block of the auction. Storing it allows you to query the block at which the auction ended. From that block you can extract the lease winning related events. (To query the block: GET /blocks/{finishEnd}.)

• auctionIndex: The unique identifier for the auction.

• leasePeriods: The available lease period indexes that may be bid on for the specific auctionIndex.

2. Using Sidecar to find the auction winners

By storing the finishEnd block and looking at the Leased events within it, we can see who the auction winners are and what lease periods they were rewarded.

Format the data however is necessary, for example:

auctionIndex: {
    leasePeriods: [
        "11", "12", "13", "14"
    ],
    finishEnd: '200'
}

3. Query the /blocks/:blockId endpoint

This step queries all blocks at the block height specified in the finishEnd field and retrieves all events inside of on_initialize. An example response would be:

{
    authorId: ....,
    extrinsics:....
    ...
    on_initialize: {
        events: [
            {
                "method": {
                    "pallet": "slots",
                    "method": "Leased"
                },
                "data": [
                    '1000', // ParaId
                    '5HpG9w8EBLe5XCrbczpwq5TSXvedjrBGCwqxK1iQ7qUsSWFc', // AccountId
                    '1', // LeasePeriod (beginning of the lease period)
                    '4', // LeasePeriod (the count of the lease period)
                    '10000', // Balance (extra balance reserved)
                    '1000000000', // Balance (total balance)
                ]
            },
            {
                "method": {
                    "pallet": "auctions",
                    "method": "AuctionClosed"
                },
                "data": [
                    ...
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
}

4. Compare your data

Now that you have all the paraIds that won slots for that auction, you can compare it with the data relevant to the auctionIndex. Comparing the leasePeriods that are available during the active auction to the leasePeriods that have been won and denoted in the Leased events (there may be multiple if there are multiple winners) will give you all the winners for that auction.

Examples

• More guides here

Resources

• Sidecar documentation

• Available Substrate Sidecar API endpoints