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Upload Methods

There are currently four upload (storage) methods available in Sugar: "aws", "bundlr", "nft_storage" and "shdw".

info

The upload methods in Sugar are designed using a Rust trait to make it easier for new methods to be added, therefore Sugar can support a wide-variety of upload methods—check the Bring your own uploader section in the Developer Guide.

Amazon (AWS) S3​

Configuration settings:

{
  . . .
  "uploadMethod": "aws",
  . . .
  "awsConfig":
  {
    "bucket": "<BUCKET_NAME>",
    "profile": "<PROFILE_NAME>",
    "directory": "<DIRECTORY_NAME>",
    "domain": "<DOMAIN_NAME>"
  },
  . . .
}

This method uploads files to Amazon S3 storage. When using the "aws", you need to specify the bucket, profile, and directory values in the configuration file under "awsConfig" and set up the credentials in your system. In most cases, this will involve creating a file ~/.aws/credentials with the following properties:

[default]
aws_access_key_id=<ACCESS KEY ID>
aws_secret_access_key=<SECRET ACCESS KEY>
region=<REGION>

It is also important to set up the ACL permission of the bucket correctly to enable "public-read" and apply Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) rules to enable content access requested from a different origin (necessary to enable wallets and blockchain explorers load the metadata/media files). More information about these configurations can be found at:

The profile value allows you to specify which profile to read from your credentials file. The directory value is the name of the directory in the bucket where the files will be uploaded, allowing you to have multiple candy machine or collections in a single bucket separated by different directories. Leaving this as an empty string will upload the files to the root of the bucket. The domain (optional) allows you to specify a custom domain to serve the data from AWS — e.g., using the domain as https://mydomain.com will create links to files in the format https://mydomain.com/0.json. If you do not specify a domain, the default AWS S3 domain will be used (https://<BUCKET_NAME>.s3.amazonaws.com).

Bundlr​

Configuration settings:

{
  . . .
  "uploadMethod": "bundlr",
  . . .
}

Note: Files are only stored for 7 days when uploaded with Bundlr on devnet.

Uploads to Arweave using Bundlr Network and payments are made in SOL.

Pinata​

Configuration settings:

{
  . . .
  "uploadMethod": "pinata",
  . . .
  "pinataConfig":
  {
    "jwt": "<JWT>",
    "apiGateway": "<URL>",
    "contentGateway": "<URL>",
    "parallelLimit": "<NUMBER>"
  },
  . . .
}

This method uploads files to Pinata storage. When using the "pinata", you need to specify the jwt, apiGateway, and contentGateway values in the configuration file under "pinataConfig":

  • jwt: JWT authentication token
  • apiGateway: URL to connect to Pinata API (use https://api.pinata.cloud for the public API endpoint)
  • contentGateway: URL to use as the base for creating the asset links (use https://gateway.pinata.cloud for the public gateway)
  • parallelLimit: (optional) number of concurrent upload, adjust this value to avoid rate limits.
info

The public gateways are not intended to be used in production — they are good to be used for testing. They are heavily rate limited and not designed for speed.

NFT.Storage​

Configuration settings:

{
  . . .
  "uploadMethod": "nft_storage",
  . . .
  "nftStorageAuthToken": "<AUTH_TOKEN>",
  . . .
}

NFT.Storage is a popular free service that uploads data on the public IPFS network. You will need to register an account to obtain an API key (token), which need to be specified by "nftStorageAuthToken" in the configuration file.

Shadow Drive​

Configuration settings:

{
  . . .
  "uploadMethod": "shdw",
  . . .
  "shdwStorageAccount": "<STORAGE PUBKEY>",
  . . .
}

Shadow Drive is a decentralized storage network built specifically for the Solana blockchain. In order to upload data to the Shadow Drive you will need to first create a storage account. This can be done using the Shadow Drive CLI. After creating a storage account, specify its pubkey address in the configuration file using the property "shdwStorageAccount".

info

The Shadow Drive upload method is only available on mainnet.