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Check address balance

Once you've initialized a wallet for a specific currency, you can query its on-chain balance. For example, if you want to know how much ETH is available in your address, simply call getBalance().

Example usage​

import { initializeWallet } from 'chaingate'

async function checkBalance() {
  // This phrase is just for demonstration; never share your real mnemonic!
  const { wallet, phrase } = await initializeWallet.fromPhrase({
    phrase: 'some bip39 phrase ...'
  })

  // Select "ethereum" from the wallet
  const ethereum = wallet.currency('ethereum')

  // Retrieve the balance
  const balance = await ethereum.getBalance()

  console.log('Confirmed balance:', balance.confirmed.str)
  console.log('Unconfirmed balance:', balance.unconfirmed.str)
  // For example: 
  // Confirmed balance: 0.005 ETH
  // Unconfirmed balance: 0 ETH
}

Confirmed vs. unconfirmed​

  • confirmed: The fully confirmed (on-chain) portion of your funds. Generally considered spendable.
  • unconfirmed: Funds awaiting sufficient confirmations or still in the mempool. Not all blockchains differentiate this, so unconfirmed might be 0 in some networks.

Understanding the balance values​

The returned balance includes two objects: confirmed and unconfirmed. Each of them provides helpful properties:

  • str – A formatted string (e.g., "0.005 ETH").
  • baseAmount – The balance in standard units as a number-like object (e.g., 0.005).
  • minimalUnitAmount – The amount in the smallest unit (e.g., wei or satoshis).
  • baseSymbol / minimalUnitSymbol – The symbols for each unit (e.g., ETH, wei).

Example​

console.log(balance.confirmed.str)
// "0.005 ETH"

console.log(balance.confirmed.baseAmount.toString())
// "0.005"

console.log(balance.confirmed.minimalUnitAmount.toString())
// "5000000000000000" (wei)

You can also perform arithmetic on balances using .plus(), .minus(), etc., if you’re working with multiple amounts.

Key points​

  • Confirmed & Unconfirmed: Some networks use a concept of “unconfirmed” funds. Others may report 0 for unconfirmed.
  • Single Wallet, Multiple Currencies: You can call getBalance() on any currency instance (e.g., bitcoin, litecoin) in the same wallet.
  • Easy to format: The returned balance objects make it easy to display values in a user-friendly or low-level format.
  • Live data: Each call to getBalance() queries the blockchain, so the data is always up to date.