What is the full list of ChainSpec properties?

Question

The ChainSpec type has a from_genesis method which takes an Option<Properties>. This Properties object is:

/// Arbitrary properties defined in chain spec as a JSON object
pub type Properties = serde_json::map::Map<String, serde_json::Value>;

I can't find any documentation on the full list of the available keys for the ChainSpec properties and what they mean / do. Where can I find this?

Answer 1

The Properties field in the Chain Specification is intentionally arbitrary. As you see in the comment:

Arbitrary properties defined in chain spec as a JSON object

As a chain spec creator, you can add whatever you want in here, and it can be used by clients or libraries which are programmed to interpret that data.

At the time of writing this post, the "common" properties included with a chain spec are:

// from Kusama
"properties": {
    "ss58Format": 2,
    "tokenDecimals": 12,
    "tokenSymbol": "KSM"
}

These are used by Polkadot JS and other front-end libraries to improve the user experience, but are not strictly required.

Answer 2

The chain spec docs link https://paritytech.github.io/substrate/master/sc_chain_spec/struct.GenericChainSpec.html#method.from_genesis

And do you know that you can produce a json file which is the chain_spec and check the keys using ... -build-spec command flag