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Network environments

Catalyst commonly uses separate network environments so you can develop safely without risking production funds/state.

You will need​

  • An RPC URL for the environment you’re targeting
  • The environment’s chain identity: chain_id, network_id, and genesis_hash

Environments​

  • Local devnet: a node (or the built-in local testnet harness) on your machine.
  • Public testnet: shared network for app testing and early ecosystem integrations.
  • Mainnet: production network (treat operationally as high risk).

Chain identity (do not mix)​

Wallets and SDK tooling must treat these as a single unit:

  • chain_id: domain separation (also the EVM chainId)
  • network_id: human-readable name (example: catalyst-testnet)
  • genesis_hash: stable hash of the genesis configuration

Canonical references:

  • catalyst-node-rust/docs/network-identity.md
  • RPC implementation: catalyst-node-rust/crates/catalyst-rpc/src/lib.rs (catalyst_getTxDomain)

Verify​

Fetch identity in one call:

curl -sS -X POST "$RPC_URL" \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"catalyst_getTxDomain","params":[]}' | jq -r '.result'

Troubleshooting​

  • Load balancer skew: don’t fetch chainId/genesisHash via separate calls. Use catalyst_getTxDomain (single-call domain) to avoid mismatched values across backends.