Development networks
When building an Electroneum Smart Chain application with smart contracts, you'll want to run it on a local network to see how it works before deploying it.
Similar to how you might run a local server on your computer for web development, you can use a development network to create a local blockchain instance to test your dapp. These Electroneum Smart Chain development networks provide features that allow for much faster iteration than a public testnet (for instance you don’t need to deal with acquiring ETN from a testnet faucet).
Prerequisites
You should understand the basics of the Electroneum Smart Chain stack and Electroneum networks before diving into development networks.
What is a development network?
Development networks are essentially Electroneum Smart Chain clients designed specifically for local development.
Why not just run a standard Electroneum Smart Chain node locally?
You could run a node but since development networks are purpose-built for development, they often come packed with convenient features like:
Deterministically seeding your local blockchain with data (e.g. accounts with ETN balances)
Instantly producing blocks with each transaction it receives, in order and with no delay
Enhanced debugging and logging functionality
Available tools
As the Electroneum Smart Chain is based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine and RPC, much of the Ethereum tooling can also be used with our smart chain.
Note: Most development frameworks include a built-in development network. We recommend starting with a framework to set up your local development environment.
Ganache
Quickly fire up a personal Ethereum blockchain which you can use to run tests, execute commands, and inspect state while controlling how the chain operates.
Ganache provides both a desktop application (Ganache UI), as well as a command-line tool (ganache-cli). It is part of the Truffle suite of tools.
Hardhat Network
A local Ethereum network designed for development. It allows you to deploy your contracts, run your tests and debug your code.
Hardhat Network comes built-in with Hardhat, an Ethereum development environment for professionals.
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