Hardhat is an Ethereum development environment created to simplify the creation, testing, and deployment of smart contracts for programmers. It offers a set of features and tools that let developers create and implement contracts more quickly, effectively, and securely.

1) Project Creation in Hardhat

npm init -y

npm install --save-dev hardhat

npx hardhat

Note : @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox plugin bundles all the commonly used packages and Hardhat plugins we recommend to start developing with Hardhat.

with this plugin all the below will be included

• @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers

• @nomiclabs/hardhat-etherscan

• hardhat-gas-reporter

• solidity-coverage

• @typechain/hardhat

npm install --save-dev @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox

NOTE : importing the Toolbox in your Hardhat config. This will make many other imports redundant

Now once project setup is done , sample project structure will contains folders as below

contracts/ - contains source files of the contracts

scripts/ - contains simple automation scripts.

test/ - contains tests files

hardhat.config.js

Hardhat project structure in below

hardhat.config.js is the important file, where we can set up a compiler version to avoid unexpected behaviour or compiling errors as new releases of Solidity are published, To deploy to a specific network /testnet, you need to add a network entry to your hardhat.config.js

2) Project Compilation in HardHat

To Compile contracts in your Hardhat project

npx hardhat compile

To clear the cache and delete the artifacts.

npx hardhat clean

For code coverage measurement - Hardhat Toolbox includes the solidity-coverage plugin by default to measure the test coverage in your project

npx hardhat coverage

3) Project Deployment in Hardhat:

Deploying your smart contracts using scripts

npx hardhat node --> gives accounts in hardhat test network

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network <network-name>

eg : To deploy to goerli network

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network goerli

4) VERIFYING THE CONTRACT :

Once deployed the contract using

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network <network-name>

Take a note of the address and the unlock time and run the verify task as mention in below to verfiy deployed contract

npx hardhat verify --network <network> <contract address>