Where's Sodium testnet?

Developers
1

Where’s Sodium testnet folks? yeah I know I can run locally and all but still I want to test and play on real net, a testnet first. Any plans for that? Basically every single other project in this space has a testnet… I mean I understand you are special…
But still where’s the Sodium testnet? :slight_smile:

2

Hi ovi

At the moment you can deploy to Sodium from dfx using the --network=ic flag, the quickstart guide will walk you through it here: https://sdk.dfinity.org/docs/quickstart/network-quickstart.html

3

thank you Ori.
it was not easy to figure this out. Sodium testnet is nowhere mentioned in the documentation…
now, how do I create an identity/account on the Sodium testnet? if this is possible then it is pretty well hidden in the documentation somewhere.
thank you for your support

4

Thanks ovi, maybe that could be revised (@lsgunn).

dfx will create an identity for you, you can find it in ~/.config/dfx/identity/
and manage it with the dfx identity command.

5

beautiful, thank you.

is it possible to make an http/s request from a canister outside of ICP realm? to let’s say any API endpoint deployed on the web2.0?

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Not natively; you will need to have some sort of oracles for now; I’ve built a simple one that would send emails through a nodejs-based oracle (to sendgrid): How to do API calls? - #8 by dpdp

7

awesome sample, thank you!
but what I take from here is that there will be natively a way to make http/s (and tcp/upd) connections from a canister to a web2.0 API (hosted outside of ICP universe), right? do you have a timeline for this?

8

I can check the current balance when I see dfx canister --network=ic call <WALLET-CANISTER-ID> cycle_balance in Deploying on the Internet Computer, but I don’t know how to get my <WALLET-CANISTER-ID>, or where can I see <WALLET-CANISTER-ID>?

9

Hi ovi,
You are correct that there’s no mention of Sodium or testnet in the documentation. Unfortunately, our onboarding information implies that “Sodium” is the name of the pre-alpha version of the Internet Computer that runs on a decentralized network (rather than locally). That is a little misleading–Sodium is just an internal milestone name but was not intended to act as separate testnet or as a network alias name. Currently, there isn’t a plan to have a standalone test network running in parallel. There’s just the Internet Computer network running on external independent data centers or running locally in your development environment.
Information about creating and running apps using separate identities is covered in this tutorial:

and there’s reference information here:

… but you are right that it is a little under-documented, so more info will be coming soon. (Just not with any mention of “Sodium”, per se.)
Please do feel free to comment on the documentation and make suggestions about topics you’d like to see covered. We love the feedback and it helps us understand how best we can improve the information we provide. The goal is always to help you make the most out of developing for the Internet Computer.

Cheers and happy new year!
LG

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10

thank you for the elaborate answer! very much appreciated.
I’ll see when I get the time to play more with ICP, if I have more feedback I will get back here.

11

here’s a few more questions if you can answer please

  1. when it will be possible to make requests (http, ftp, upd) from a canister outside of the ICP realm (to services which are not installed/running in ICP)
  2. how can I estimate how much ICP I need to run a service, are there tools that can help with a rough estimation? how can one approach this matter?
  3. I saw the demo about the api which allows to store big amounts of data in a very fast manner and cheap. the questions are: how cheap is the storage of data in concrete numbers (it is ok if ICP token is used to value that), how resilient is that storage? meaning how many nodes duplicate the big bucket/bulk of data?
1 Like
12

  1. Sorry, it’s not clear to me which direction you mean.

    • Services on the IC cannot initate calls/requests to things (canisters, HTTP servers) outside.
    • Classic web services can call canisers running on IC, using the IC protocol. You can use the rust agent to do that, for example.
    • Access via HTTP from the outside is not officially, at least not for now. There are inofficial hacks/experiments.

  2. Estimates are not made yet. You will be able to use the local ic (dfx start) and run some typical work-loads to know your cycle consumption.

  3. Also, still in the air, sorry.

1 Like
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  1. yes I mean to be able to initiate from a canister code a request/connection (http/udp/ftp) to a service that is outside of IC; you say it is not possible today, but when it will be possible? any ETA? not in plans at all?
  2. in the air… the question was not clear or you do not know the answer?
14
  1. No plans at all at the moment. It’s very tricky to reconcile it with the need for determinism.
  2. I don’t know the answer, and I believe nobody does know at the moment. I expect that we will have to find answers eventually, in order for the network to really self-fund.
15

no plans to be able to make requests outside of IC?.. that is harsh, I see it as a fundamental feature for IC to really take off otherwise it will live in a bubble like all other blockchains out there do; the oracle solutions existing today are not really decentralized and they are the single point of failure in an overall distributed system architecture.
imagine having all those oracles which are not decentralized today running in IC! that would be a game changer.
I get it, it is hard to solve, that’s why it doesn’t really exist today yet, but dfinity team can pull it off if they put it on their agenda that is.

1 Like