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Create a token

Intermediate
Tutorial

Custom tokens can be created and deployed on ICP using the ICRC-1 or ICRC-2 token standards.

The ICRC-1 standard is considered the 'base' standard, as it defines a set of general functionalities that all ledgers must adhere to. Any tokens and their corresponding ledgers must fulfill all requirements of the ICRC-1 standard. Read about token standards to learn more about what token standards are and the functionalities each one supports.

This guide will provide a quickstart on how you can create and deploy your own custom token using the ICRC-1 standard. 

Setup a local ICRC-1 ledger​

To create a new ICRC-1 token, you will need to first download and configure a local project for the ICRC-1 ledger canister. This is because each token will need its own ledger canister to record the token's balances and transactions. Follow the ICRC-1 ledger documentation for instructions.

Export token settings​

The initialization arguments of the ICRC-1 ledger are not specified in the standard. Thus, the arguments defined in this section are dependent on the reference implementation of the ICRC-1 ledger. If you build your own ICRC-1 ledger, you may use different initialization arguments.

To create a token, you will need to record several values. The full list can be found below:

PRE_MINTED_TOKENS​

Amount of tokens that are minted during deployment for a specific account. In this tutorial, it will be the DEFAULT account.

dfx identity use default
echo $(dfx identity get-principal)

TRANSFER_FEE​

Fee that users of the ledger will have to pay anytime they want to make a transfer.

ARCHIVE_CONTROLLER​

The controller principal of the archive canisters.

dfx identity new archive_controller
dfx identity use archive_controller
echo $(dfx identity get-principal)

TRIGGER_THRESHOLD​

The number of blocks to archive when the trigger threshold is exceeded.

CYCLE_FOR_ARCHIVE_CREATION​

The number of cycles that will be sent to the archive canister when it is created.

NUM_OF_BLOCK_TO_ARCHIVE​

The number of blocks that will be archived.

TOKEN_NAME​

The name of your token.

TOKEN_SYMBOL​

The ticker symbol of your new token.

MINTER​

The account of the principal responsible for minting and burning tokens (see the ICRC-1 specification). Transfers from the minting account will generate Mint transactions, resulting in the creation of new tokens. To mint tokens, the minting account must call the icrc1_transfer function, specifying the recipient in the 'to' value.

Transfers sent to the minting account will generate Burn transactions, destroying tokens. An icrc1_transfer call from any principal with the 'to' value set as the minting account will burn tokens.

dfx identity new minter
dfx identity use minter
echo $(dfx identity get-principal)

FEATURE_FLAGS​

A flag for enabling or disabling certain extension standards to the ICRC-1 standard. In this case, the reference implementation can also support ICRC-2 transactions.

If you only want to support the ICRC-1 standard, then you can set the flag to false. If you want to also support the ICRC-2 standard, set it to true.

Edit the project's dfx.json file​

Replace the existing content in the dfx.json with the following, updating the values of TOKEN_SYMBOL, TOKEN_NAME, MINTER, TRANSFER_FEE, DEFAULT_ACCOUNT_ID, PRE_MINTED_TOKENS, NUM_OF_BLOCKS_TO_ARCHIVE, TRIGGER_THRESHOLD, and ARCHIVE_CONTROLLER with the values obtained in the previous steps:

dfx.json does not support referring to values through environment variables. Values must be hardcoded in plain text.

{
    "canisters": {
        "icrc1_ledger_canister": {
            "type": "custom",
            "candid": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dfinity/ic/<REVISION>/rs/ledger_suite/icrc1/ledger/ledger.did",
            "wasm": "https://download.dfinity.systems/ic/<REVISION>/canisters/ic-icrc1-ledger.wasm.gz",
            "init_arg": "(variant {Init = record { token_symbol = "TOKEN_SYMBOL"; token_name = "TOKEN_NAME"; minting_account = record { owner = principal "MINTER" transfer_fee = TRANSFER_FEE; metadata = vec {}; feature_flags = opt record{icrc2 = false}; initial_balances = vec { record { record { owner = principal "DEFAULT_ACCOUNT_ID"; }; "PRE_MINTED_TOKENS"; }; }; archive_options = record { num_blocks_to_archive = "NUM_OF_BLOCK_TO_ARCHIVE"; trigger_threshold = "TRIGGER_THRESHOLD"; controller_id = principal "ARCHIVE_CONTROLLER"; cycles_for_archive_creation = opt "10000000000000"; }; }} })" },
            },
    "defaults": {
        "build": {
            "args": "",
            "packtool": ""
        }
        },
    "output_env_file": ".env",
    "version": 1
}

Alternatively, you can pass these init arguments to the canister through the command line. Learn more about canister init arguments.

Deploy the ledger locally​

Deploying to the playground is ICP's equivalent of deploying to a testnet network.

In this workflow, you cannot deploy this canister to the playground (using the flag dfx deploy --playground) because it does not accept gzipped Wasm files.

Deploy the ICRC-1 ledger canister locally and pass in the arguments to create your token.

dfx start --clean --background
dfx deploy icrc1_ledger_canister --specified-id mxzaz-hqaaa-aaaar-qaada-cai

For additional details, you can learn more in the ICRC-1 ledger documentation.

Your token has been created locally. To interact with your token, learn how to interact with the ICRC-1 ledger.

Deploying your token to the mainnet​

If you want to deploy your ICRC-1 token on the mainnet, follow these steps:

  • Remove the --specified-id flag. Your ledger canister will receive a unique canister ID when deployed on the mainnet.

  • Specify the initially minted token value by setting initial_values = vec {<INITIAL_VALUES>}. View the ledger.did file for the details of the argument.

  • Add the --network ic flag to the command to deploy to the mainnet.

  • Confirm that the archive_options field is set. If archiving is disabled, your ledger's memory capacity will be limited to that of a single canister.

  • Be sure that your ledger canister has cycles attached to the create_canister messages, using the cycles_for_archive_creation.

Next steps​

Learn how to interact with the ICRC-1 ledger

Resources​