Introduction We are excited to announce that DFINITY started working on enabling canister migration from one subnet to another subnet. This feature allows canister developers to move their canisters away from a busy subnet or onto a subnet with desired subnet features (e.g., the European subnet) or …

I think the most tricky part is the Canister ID migration. Could you please elaborate a bit more in that? This will need changes at protocol level no? It can’t be done at “canister” level right? It’s unclear to me how it “swaps” one for the other. How easy / fast it would propagate that change ac…

[image] tiago89: This will need changes at protocol level no? It can’t be done at “canister” level right? Indeed. Canister ID migration will be supported by the core protocol using the management canister abstraction: there will be a new endpoint on the management canister (implemented direct…

Yes, now I understand. This is pretty cool :sunglasses: Ok, now I see how that would work, thank you for the detail. :pray: And congrats, this wasn’t an easy problem to crack. I really like the NNS canister being the sole controller and processor of all these steps. :+1::clap:

[image] mraszyk: the NNS canister updates the routing table in the ICP registry This step was previously not agreeable based on discussions with other members of Dfinity engineering based on the reasoning that this would lead to a fragmented routing table (hence reducing the benefits of a con…

[image] saikatdas0790: how would this affect canister lookup speeds on all subnets tl;dr The performance of canister lookups in the routing table will be addressed by refactoring the routing table in the registry and certified state tree. Currently, the entire routing table (across all subne…

Will it also be possible to duplicate a canister? You mentioned it above that there will temporarily be two canisters on the two subnets. Eventually one will get removed. Can I keep both if I wanted to? Or maybe this question is not specific to migration? Because I could ask the same for creating …

[image] timo: Will it also be possible to duplicate a canister? Indeed. The extended canister snapshot API will also allow to “duplicate” or “clone” a canister. [image] timo: Can I keep both if I wanted to? Absolutely, you can keep both. Of course, this only works if your canister doe…

Let me guess, from the perspective of somebody that is holding people’s applications hostage, you would NOT want this change to be implemented? Anybody have a feeling what saikat’s views are on this?

Hi Adam :waving_hand: [image] anon98822045: Anybody have a feeling what saikat’s views are on this? I’m ALWAYS HAPPY to answer any questions you have of us :slight_smile: [image] anon98822045: you would NOT want this change to be implemented FAR from it. We’ve been eagerly waiting fo…

[image] mraszyk: Indeed. The extended canister snapshot API will also allow to “duplicate” or “clone” a canister. Would this mean I can keep two or more canisters that have the same ID and use that as a way to scale?

Canister Migration

Developers

mraszyk January 26, 2026, 9:09am 18

Canister ID migration is now also available: see
https://forum.dfinity.org/t/canister-migrations-available-now/63181

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Canister Migration

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