Introduction
Whisky is an open-source Cardano Rust SDK built by SIDAN Lab. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for building Cardano DApps in Rust, with a chainable builder API inspired by MeshJS.
Modules
Whisky is organized as a Rust workspace with the following crates:
| Crate | Description |
|---|---|
| whisky | The main crate — re-exports everything you need for DApp development |
| whisky-common | Shared types, interfaces, and utilities used across all crates |
| whisky-pallas | Transaction serializer built on TxPipe’s Pallas (recommended) |
| whisky-csl | Legacy serializer built on cardano-serialization-lib |
| whisky-provider | Provider integrations for Blockfrost and Maestro |
| whisky-wallet | Wallet signing and key management utilities |
| whisky-macros | Procedural macros for Plutus data encoding |
| whisky-js | WASM bindings for JavaScript/TypeScript usage |
What You Can Do
With whisky, you can:
- Build transactions with a chainable, cardano-cli-like API supporting complex DApp backends
- Parse and edit transactions from raw CBOR hex
- Sign transactions with key-based signing in Rust
- Interact with the blockchain via Maestro and Blockfrost providers
- Evaluate scripts off-chain using TxPipe’s
uplcfor execution unit estimation - Swap serializer backends between Pallas and CSL via dependency injection
Guide Overview
This guide walks you through:
- Installation — Adding whisky to your project
- Quick Start — Building your first transaction
- Transaction Builder — Simple sends, Plutus scripts, minting, staking
- Transaction Parser — Parsing and editing existing transactions
- Dependency Injection — Pluggable serializers and providers
- Migration: CSL to Pallas — Upgrading from the legacy backend
For full API reference, see the generated Rust docs.