state_getStorage

Returns a storage entry at a specific key on Kusama.

Why Kusama? Build on Polkadot's canary network for real-world testing with live economic conditions with 7-day governance cycles (vs 1 month on Polkadot), lower bonding requirements, live KSM token economy, and first-to-market feature testing.

Use Cases

• State queries - Read on-chain storage values
• Account balances - Query account data for parachain experimentation, early feature deployment, and production-grade testing with real value
• Pallet storage - Access runtime storage items
• Historical state - Query state at specific blocks

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
key	String	Yes	Storage key (hex-encoded)
blockHash	String	No	Block hash for historical query

Request

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "state_getStorage",
  "params": [""],
  "id": 1
}

Code Examples

cURL

curl  \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "state_getStorage",
    "params": [""],
    "id": 1
  }'

JavaScript

import { ApiPromise, WsProvider } from '@polkadot/api';

const provider = new WsProvider('');
const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider });

// Query account balance
const account = '5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY';
const accountInfo = await api.query.system.account(account);
console.log('Free balance:', accountInfo.data.free.toString());

// Query at specific block
const blockHash = '0x91b171bb158e2d3848fa23a9f1c25182fb8e20313b2c1eb49219da7a70ce90c3';
const historicalBalance = await api.query.system.account.at(blockHash, account);
console.log('Historical balance:', historicalBalance.data.free.toString());

await api.disconnect();

Python

import requests

def get_storage(key, block_hash=None):
    url = ''
    params = [key] if block_hash is None else [key, block_hash]

    payload = {
        'jsonrpc': '2.0',
        'method': 'state_getStorage',
        'params': params,
        'id': 1
    }

    response = requests.post(url, json=payload)
    return response.json()['result']

# Query :code storage (runtime wasm)
storage_key = ''
value = get_storage(storage_key)
print(f'Storage value: {value[:66]}...' if value else 'None')

Related Methods

• state_getMetadata - Get runtime metadata
• state_getKeysPaged - Enumerate storage keys