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What is Hardhat?

Hardhat is a development environment for Ethereum that helps developers manage and automate the common tasks involved in building smart contracts and decentralized applications. It can directly interact with Caldera’s Ethereum API, allowing for the deployment of smart contracts into the Caldera network. Additionally, Hardhat is a comprehensive set of tools for creating Ethereum-based software, which includes various components that aid in editing, compiling, debugging, and deploying smart contracts and decentralized applications. All of these components work together to create a complete development environment.

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Creating a Hardhat Project

  1. Create a directory for your project: 
    mkdir hardhat && cd hardhat
  2. Initialize the project, which will create a package.json file 
    npm init -y
  3. Install Hardhat 
    npm install hardhat
  4. Create a project 
    npx hardhat
  5. Create an empty hardhat.config.js and install the Ethers plugin to use the Ethers.js library to interact with the network. 
    npm install @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers ethers

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Creating Your Smart Contract

  1. Create a contracts directory 
    mkdir contracts && cd contracts
  2. Create your_contract.sol file in contracts directory 
    touch your_contract.sol

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Creating Your Configuration File

Modify the Hardhat configuration file and create a secure file to store your private key in.
  1. Create a secrets.json file to store your private key 
    touch secrets.json
  2. Add your private key to secrets.json 
    {
    "privateKey": "YOUR-PRIVATE-KEY-HERE"
}
  3. Add the file to your project’s .gitignore, and never reveal your private key.
  4. Modify the hardhat.config.js file
    • Import the Ethers.js plugin
    • Import the secrets.json file
    • Inside the module.exports add the Caldera network configuration
    hardhat.config.js
    require('@nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers');
const { privateKey } = require('./secrets.json');

module.exports = {
solidity: "0.8.1",
defaultNetwork: "rinkeby",
networks: {
    rinkeby: {
    url: "https://eth-rinkeby.alchemyapi.io/v2/123abc123abc123abc123abc123abcde",
    accounts: [privateKey]
    },
    caldera: {
    url: "RPC URL",  // Insert your RPC URL Here
    }
},
}

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Deploying Your Smart Contract

  1. Compile the contract 
    npx hardhat compile
  2. Create a new directory for the script and name it scripts and add a new file to it called deploy.js 
    mkdir scripts && cd scripts
touch deploy.js
  3. Create a deployment script, like the one below
    scripts/deploy.js
    async function main() {
// 1. Get the contract to deploy
const Your_Contract = await ethers.getContractFactory('your_contract');
console.log('Deploying Your_Contract...');

// 2. Instantiating a new smart contract
const your_contract = await Your_Contract.deploy();

// 3. Waiting for the deployment to resolve
await your_contract.deployed();

// 4. Use the contract instance to get the contract address
console.log('Your_Contract deployed to:', your_contract.address);
}

main()
.then(() => process.exit(0))
.catch((error) => {
    console.error(error);
    process.exit(1);
});
  4. Deploy your_contract.sol using the command below 
    npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network caldera