This is Scaffold-ETH
Scaffold-ETH lets you quickly experiment with Solidity using a frontend that adapts to your smart contract.
Building web3 applications can be tricky and stressful, especially if you’re trying to figure it all out from scratch. Set up can be a challenge and there are many traps you can fall into, and errors you can make while trying to get up and running. Scaffold-ETH is a tool stack that helps you get started creating and experimenting with DApps. It helps you learn how to iterate on your contract, to figure out what works and what doesn’t work pretty quickly.
Do you want to learn how to create your first DApp? Do you want to learn how to create an NFT builder? How about a multisig wallet, or deploy a token? Scaffold-ETH is for you!
What is Scaffold-ETH
A scaffold is anything that acts as a template or framework. In educational terms, scaffolding means breaking down information into easy to understand concepts while providing a tool or structure that guides your process. So if we follow this logic, Scaffold-ETH is a stack of tools that helps guide your process creating decentralized applications on Ethereum.
What are DApps?
A Decentralized application (DApp) is a program built on a decentralized network instead of a centralized server. In Ethereum, a DApp is a smart contract with a front end interface. DApps are open source and distributed, so they are much more difficult to censor. In contrast to popular apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, no one person or party controls a DApp, so no one person or party can shut it down.
What is a smart contract?
A smart contract is a set of code that lives on the Ethereum blockchain and runs exactly as programmed. Ethereum.org uses a basic analogy of smart contracts being like a vending machine. If you want to get a can of coke from a vending machine but you haven’t inserted enough coins, the vending machine won’t dispense it no matter how much you try. This is because the vending machine was built to perform a specific action once one or more conditions are met. Smart contracts work in exactly the same way. A user action triggers a pre-coded response from the contract that cannot be changed.
The Scaffold-Eth 🏗technology stack.
Solidity: This is the main smart contract language of Ethereum, the solidity section gives you some tips and learning material to get you on the path of confidently developing smart contracts and deploying them to your network of choice.
Hardhat: Scaffold-ETH wraps the Hardhat Ethereum development environment and makes deploying and testing smart contracts super easy.
React: Scaffold-ETH utilizes React for the frontend.
Ethers.js: Ethers.js is a library for interacting with your deployed smart contracts from the frontend. Scaffold-ETH abstracts much of Ethers from developers and provides common react hooks, helpers, and components that already have Ethers backed.
Ant design: Ant design is a fantastic UI library with components like the grids, menus, dates, times and buttons
It’s time to Scaffold-ETH
Before you get started with Scaffold-ETH, there are some things you need to make sure you have installed: Node.js, Yarn and Git. Check out the Scaffold-Eth Readme on Github for install instructions.
The most important software you should focus on when starting to work with Scaffold-ETH are Hardhat, which is where you will write your Solidity smart contracts, deploy and test them, and React-app, which is where you will build the front-end for your smart contracts.
Start Building
Now that you have Scaffold-ETH installed you can start working your way through your DApp. Special shout out to Austin Griffith and the Ethereum community for building and maintaining this tool.
Get scaffolding!
If you’re interested in learning more about Moonshot Collective, or GitcoinDAO, here’s where you can find us.
