exchange-rates

Exchange Rates Canister

🥷 Try it live — no local setup. ICP Ninja is a web-based IDE that builds and deploys this project to the mainnet for free, right in your browser. Click the badge above, or hit Deploy if you're already in Ninja. To build and run it locally instead, follow the steps below.

A Rust canister demonstrating how to query the Exchange Rate Canister (XRC) to get cryptocurrency and fiat currency exchange rates.

The XRC returns real-time rates sourced via HTTPS outcalls to external data providers, with decentralized consensus across the subnet.

For local development, an XRC mock canister is deployed automatically — it returns a fixed rate without making any HTTPS outcalls. On the IC mainnet, the production XRC canister (uf6dk-hyaaa-aaaaq-qaaaq-cai) is used instead.

Build and deploy from the command line

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• icp-cli: npm install -g @icp-sdk/icp-cli @icp-sdk/ic-wasm
• Rust with wasm32-unknown-unknown target: rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Install

git clone https://github.com/dfinity/examples
cd examples/rust/exchange-rates

Deploy and test locally

icp network start -d
icp deploy
bash test.sh
icp network stop

The local deployment includes the XRC mock canister. icp-cli automatically injects the mock's canister ID into the backend via the PUBLIC_CANISTER_ID:xrc environment variable.

Deploy to mainnet

To query live exchange rates, deploy to the IC mainnet:

icp deploy -e ic
icp canister call -e ic backend get_exchange_rate '(record { symbol = "ICP"; class = variant { Cryptocurrency } }, record { symbol = "USD"; class = variant { FiatCurrency } })'

On mainnet, the production XRC canister ID (uf6dk-hyaaa-aaaaq-qaaaq-cai) is injected automatically via icp.yaml.

Security considerations and best practices

Refer to the security best practices for information on security and best practices for your ICP app.