Can't get balance of ALICE account from RPC via curl

Question

If run this RPC query via curl:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"id":1, "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method": "state_getStorage", "params": ["0xc2261276cc9d1f8598ea4b6a74b15c2fb99d880ec681799c0cf30e8886371da9de1e86a9a8c739864cf3cc5ec2bea59fd43593c715fdd31c61141abd04a99fd6822c8558854ccde39a5684e7a56da27d"]}' http://127.0.0.1:9933

The output is null when it should display the balance of the ALICE account. WHY?

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","result":null,"id":1}

Answer 1

The substrate-node-template allows you to query the system.account storage item, see screenshot

The corresponding command is

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"id":1, "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method": "state_getStorage", "params": ["0x26aa394eea5630e07c48ae0c9558cef7b99d880ec681799c0cf30e8886371da9de1e86a9a8c739864cf3cc5ec2bea59fd43593c715fdd31c61141abd04a99fd6822c8558854ccde39a5684e7a56da27d"]}' http://127.0.0.1:9933

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","result":"0x01000000000000000100000000000000dcb114568172fc0f0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000","id":1}

The frame_system declares an AccountInfo struct that details the data field of an account:

/// Information of an account.
#[derive(Clone, Eq, PartialEq, Default, RuntimeDebug, Encode, Decode)]
pub struct AccountInfo<Index, AccountData> {
    /// The number of transactions this account has sent.
    pub nonce: Index,
    /// The number of other modules that currently depend on this account's existence. The account
    /// cannot be reaped until this is zero.
    pub consumers: RefCount,
    /// The number of other modules that allow this account to exist. The account may not be reaped
    /// until this is zero.
    pub providers: RefCount,
    /// The additional data that belongs to this account. Used to store the balance(s) in a lot of
    /// chains.
    pub data: AccountData,
}

The runtime/src/lib.rs is where all of your configs are created. If you look carefully at

impl frame_system::Config for Runtime {
    ...
    type AccountData = pallet_balances::AccountData<Balance>;
    ...
}

and

impl pallet_balances::Config for Runtime {
    ...
    type AccountStore = System;
    ...

}

you will see why the system storage exposes the balances in the data, not the balances storage. Use type AccountStore = Balances; instead to leverage the usage of pallet-balances.