Smart contract development frameworks make life easier for engineers by allowing them to deploy and test their smart contracts. It took me hours and days to go through each framework recommended by ConsenSys and the Ethereum website to see which ones are the best for 2021. You can see my experimentation with platforms on GitHub. Having a backend of smart contracts is great. but if no one can use it, it`s worthless. create-eth-app is a platform that allows you to set up a frontend for your smart contracts with reactJS. It uses many newer reaction tricks like status hooks and makes it easy to build really powerful frontends. Hardhat is one of the best frameworks on the market. With some of the fastest tests, best tutorials, and simplest integrations, honestly, anyone who loves JS frameworks should try Hardhat at some point. Really easy to get started, quick tests like lightning and getting started are really easy. There has always been discord to answer questions very quickly, so if you encounter any problems, you can always ask for help. They use waffle and Ether.js for testing, which is arguably the “best” Javascript smart contract framework, due to very nice quality of life improvements over Web3.js. As almost everyone knows, it is usually quite easy to get the support of colleagues.
I really hope the team gets more support for this project because they are so madly flooded. It feels like the truffle team has started working more on their paid platform when some of the documents in their main project are losing value. I hope they will see this article and work to improve it so that they can remain one of the go-to platforms for testing and deploying smart contracts. Truffle has been the default framework for several years, so you`ll easily find most projects that use this platform, so it`s easy to find examples. It also comes with other tools like drizzle and ganache that you will see, many other platforms are based on ganache because it is so powerful. The tests run a little slower than Hardhat for this reason, and due to the high number of users, it can be a bit difficult to get help. I can`t wait to see how they will improve this project since its acquisition by Consensys. For those looking for even more tools, you can pay for a Truffle Teams account where you have access to some really cool features to make your life easier. Your documentation seems to fall a bit, but if you`re Googled for an error you`re encountering, you`ll probably come across someone who`s already encountered the error. I found some of the best ways to improve the project by leaving a VERY THOUGHTFUL problem on their Github. It is also our open source duty to do so to improve these protocols. If they didn`t stop working on it, their SDK would easily be one of the four best frameworks.
Truffles have been the standard scaffolding for several years, and for good reason. It is a powerful framework that sets the standard for many others. You`ll easily find most of the projects that use this platform, so it`s easy to find examples. Truffle can also be easily integrated into its sister tools Drizzle and Ganache. Ganache, in particular, is one of the most popular ways for engineers to run a local blockchain. For those looking for even more tools, you can pay for an updated Truffle team account and access continuous integration of smart contracts, visual deployments, and monitoring. You`ll also have access to direct integration with OpenZeppelin`s updatable smart contract plugin, which is a big win. This is clearly a group of talented engineers who want to make the world a better and smart place to contract.
I was surprised to see a framework outside the top 3 with so many stars on Github (3.1k). I don`t know who uses it, but at least someone seems to be using it. This tool has a lot of bells and whistles. After having a little trouble launching it (of course, I fulfilled my open source assignment and solved a problem), I was able to deploy my contracts on the Kovan network. It comes with a user interface that allows you to interact with the blockchain and your contracts in a graphical interface. It seemed like there was a bit of a learning curve that I didn`t spend enough time on to get over it, but there was a lot of promise. I would like to see people try this framework more and see the power. I feel like I can`t do him justice here because of the limited time I spent on the project. I would like to see people try this framework more and see the power. I feel like I can`t do him justice here because of the limited time I spent on the project.
I think decoupling your frontend from your backend is always the best practice, but if you need to start a project with a good frontend and don`t care about decoupling, you should check that project 100%. The other HUGE piece that the openzepplin has is its scalable contract functionality. Deploying a functional project means that you must deploy a proxy contract that you must update if you want to make changes. This is another project that feels amazing and “clean”. Honestly, any project, no matter what platform you`re using, should probably use something that openzepplin created at some point. Although I said it`s “truffle”, it`s not very truffle in style, but in a commercial sense. They have an open source project, but they have a paid upgrade tool for those who want to work more with it. They use the Web3 implementation of Java and it seems that it is still early in project development. I was happy to see that they had Android support, so I`m really curious to see how this project progresses, and we could bring more Java engineers into the industry as there aren`t many Java smart contract platforms out there. I couldn`t get to Kovan, so it was stopped, but it seems they have support for Rinkeby.
Really excited to see the project move forward. Waffle itself can be used as a deployment framework. Although you need to write a lot more of your own custom scripts. It`s listed as a smart contract framework, although it seems a bit silly to compare it to these other frameworks. Waffle can be used with any framework and is currently the default tool for working with Hardhat. The waffle is excellent and even better paired with a helmet. I don`t recommend using it myself, but if you don`t want to work with any of the bells and whistles that come with a safety helmet or truffle, using it feels like a more raw, simpler, and customizable version. Openzepplin is a platform that develops tools for smart contract engineers. They have default settings like the ERC20 and ERC721 tools where you can simply import your contract and create a token in seconds. Look at how easy it is to create an ERC20 with Openzepplin: and also remarkable blockchain tools and integrations.
We`ve also listed some important non-framework tools in the top 3 section. Ultimately, there are three smart contract development frameworks that I would recommend to anyone. Each has a slightly different taste and a reason why you would choose it. The third criterion is important because it allowed me to test how the framework interacts with other packages and integration tests. Working with oracles and third-party tools like OpenZeppelin is basically a must for 2021, which is why this last element is so important. Now, I don`t recommend using it as they intentionally don`t support it anymore, but it was one of the best development experiences I`ve had with a smart contract framework. I hope that the 3 most important can grasp what made this project so brilliant. There`s a reason I said above that everyone should use Openzepplin tools. It just works.
The world of smart contracts and blockchain is changing rapidly. Some of the hottest tools from two years ago are already old news, and smart contract development frameworks are no different. It`s cool to see Truffle stay at the forefront of the game, but what`s even bigger is that so many projects have taken a different approach to the problem. Now I understand why this project stopped working on it, they want to focus on a really difficult problem with scalable smart contracts, but to be honest, it`s a bit of a shame. This project is cllleeeeaaaaaan. I was able to deploy my chainlinked smart contract and read the eth price faster than almost any other framework. .