Hardhat

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.

Creating a Hardhat Project

Create a directory for your project:
```
mkdir hardhat && cd hardhat
```
Initialize the project, which will create a package.json file
```
npm init -y
```
Install Hardhat
```
npm install hardhat
```
Create a project
```
npx hardhat
```
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
```

Creating Your Smart Contract

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

Creating Your Configuration File

Modify the Hardhat configuration file and create a secure file to store your private key in.

Create a secrets.json file to store your private key
```
touch secrets.json
```

Add your private key to secrets.json

{
    "privateKey": "YOUR-PRIVATE-KEY-HERE"
}

Add the file to your project's .gitignore, and never reveal your private key.

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

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]
    },
    VictoryChainTestnet: {
        url: "https://testnet.rpc.victorychain.io",  // RPC URL Here
        chainId: 199207251 , // ChainID Here
    }
},
}

Deploying Your Smart Contract

Compile the contract
```
npx hardhat compilejs
```
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
```

Create a deployment script, like the one below

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);
});

Deploy your_contract.sol using the command below

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network [todo: insert network name from above]