Project-A0

About 📖

This is a mono repo forked from ink!athon for dapp development on Aleph Zero.

Getting started

1. Run the frontend

The frontend works out of the box, without a local node running, as the sample contract is pre-deployed on certain live testnets (i.e. alephzero-testnet). Necessary deployment metadata and addresses are provided under contracts/deployments/.

Pre-requisites:

• Setup Node.js v18+ (recommended via nvm with nvm install 18)
• Install pnpm (recommended via Node.js Corepack or npm i -g pnpm)
• Clone this repository

Special Instructions for Windows Users

[!IMPORTANT]
Windows users must either use WSL (recommended) or a custom shell like Git Bash. PowerShell is not supported.

Pre-requisites when using WSL for Linux:

• Install WSL and execute all commands in the WSL terminal
• Setup Node.js v18+ (recommended via nvm with nvm install 18)
• Install the following npm packages globally:
• npm i -g npm
• npm i -g pnpm node-gyp make
• Clone this repository into the WSL file system (e.g. /home/<user>/inkathon).

Tip: You can enter \\wsl$\ in the top bar of the Windows Explorer to access the WSL file system visually.

# Install dependencies (once)
# NOTE: This automatically creates an `.env.local` file
pnpm install

# Start Next.js frontend
pnpm run dev

Optionally, to enable simple-git-hooks (for automatic linting & formatting when committing), you can run the following command once: pnpm simple-git-hooks.

2. Build & deploy contracts on a local node or fork

The contracts/package.json file contains shorthand scripts for building, testing, and deploying your contracts. To run these scripts, you need to set contracts/ as the active working directory in your terminal.

Pre-requisites:

• Install Rust and Ink via the Aleph Zero Docs
• Optional: Install substrate-contracts-node for running local substrate node

# Build contracts and move artifacts to `contracts/deployments/{contract}/` folders
pnpm run build

# Start local node with persistence (contracts stay deployed after restart)
# NOTE: When using Brave, shields have to be taken down for the UIs
pnpm run node

## IMPORTANT: Open a separate terminal window and keep the node running

# Forks Aleph Zero Testnet and runs it locally
pnpm run fork-testnet

# Deploy the contracts on the local node
pnpm run deploy

Alternatively, you can also deploy contracts manually using Contracts UI (pnpm contracts-ui) in the browser.

3. Connect the frontend to the local node

Open the frontend/.env.local file and set the NEXT_PUBLIC_DEFAULT_CHAIN variable to development. Then restart the frontend and you should be able to interact with the contracts deployed on your local node.

Read more about environment variables and all available chain constants in the Environment Variables section below.

Contract Tests

Jest

Smart contract tests written with Jest are located in /contracts/test.

# To run the tests, set contracts as the active working directory
cd contracts

# Run all test suites
pnpm test

# Run specific test suite abaxcaller
pnpm test abaxcaller

Warning

After the tests are completed, close the terminal running the fork before restarting the tests.

Deployment 🚢

Spinning up a deployment via Vercel is pretty straightforward as the necessary settings are already configured in vercel.json. If you haven't cloned the repository yet, you can also use the Deploy button below to create a new repository from this template.

Environment Variables

One key element making this boilerplate so flexible is the usage of environment variables to configure the active network in the frontend. This is done by setting the NEXT_PUBLIC_DEFAULT_CHAIN variable in the frontend/.env.local file, or in the Vercel deployment settings respectively.

All Supported Chain Constants

Network Identifier	Name	Type
development	️Local Development Node	Testnet
alephzero-testnet	Aleph Zero Testnet	Testnet
rococo	Rococo	Testnet
shibuya	Shibuya Testnet	Testnet
shiden	Shiden	Mainnet
alephzero	Aleph Zero	Mainnet
astar	Astar	Mainnet

Source: https://github.com/scio-labs/use-inkathon/blob/main/src/chains.ts

[!NOTE]
Chains can also be supplied manually by creating a SubstrateChain object. If you think a chain is missing, please open an issue or PR.

All environment variables are imported from process.env in frontend/src/config/environment.ts for type safety.

Environment Variables	Default Values	Description
NEXT_PUBLIC_DEFAULT_CHAIN *️⃣	️alephzero-testnet	The network (Substrate-based chain) the frontend should connect to by default and what contract deployment artifacts to import.
NEXT_PUBLIC_PRODUCTION_MODE	false	Optional boolean flag to differentiate production environment (e.g. for SEO or Analytics).
NEXT_PUBLIC_URL	http://localhost:3000	Optional string that defines the base URL of the frontend (will be auto-inferred from Vercel environment variables).
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPPORTED_CHAINS	–	Optional array with network identifers (e.g. ["alephzero-testnet", "alephzero"]) that are supported by the frontend, if the dApp is supposed to be multi-chain.

*️⃣ Required

Contract Deployment

In the Getting Started section above, we've already deployed the sample contracts on a local node. To target a live network, we can use the CHAIN environment variable when running the deploy script.

CHAIN=alephzero-testnet pnpm run deploy

Further, dynamically loaded environment files with the .env.{chain} naming convention can be used to add additional configuration about the deployer account.

# .env.alephzero-testnet
ACCOUNT_URI=bottom drive obey lake curtain smoke basket hold race lonely fit walk//Alice

When running the same script again, this deployer account defined there will be used to sign the extrinsic.

Warning

These files are gitignored by default, but you should still be extra cautious when adding sensitive information to them.

Customization 🎨

1. Project Name

There are multiple places where you need to insert your project's name and identifier. Most of these occurrences are highlighted with a /* TODO */ comment in the code. You can easily replace them one by one by installing the todo-tree plugin.

Additionally, there are the following un-highlighted occurrences:

• the name of the inkathon.code-workspace file
• the package.json's name & metadata in the root directory as well as in the contracts/ and frontend/ packages
• the workspace dependency (@inkathon/contracts) defined in frontend/package.json and imported in frontend/src/deployments/deployments.ts

2. Custom Contracts

To add a new one, you need to do the following:

• Add a new contract directory under contracts/src/
• Add it as another workspace member to the contracts/Cargo.toml file
• Adjust the deployment script contracts/scripts/deploy.ts
• Adjust the ContractIds enum and getDeployments function in frontend/src/deployments/deployments.ts

3. Custom Scripts

Adding custom scripts is useful to interact with your contracts or test certain functionality. Therefore, just duplicate & reuse the contracts/scripts/script.template.ts file and run it via pnpm run script <script-name>. This command will run the TypeScript file directly via tsx.

For general scripts, the same environment variable initialization & configuration applies as described below in the Deployment section (e.g. to change the target network).

The Stack 🥞

The Stack in Detail

• Monorepo Workspace with contracts/ and frontend/ directories as packages.
• Package Manager: pnpm or yarn@stable (Read more in the FAQs section below)
• Smart Contract Development: Rust, ink!, cargo-contract, substrate-contracts-node
• Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript
  • Contract Interactions: polkadot-js, useInkathon React Hooks & Utility Library (alternatively: useInk)
  • Styling: chakra, tailwindcss, twin.macro, emotion
  • Linting & Formatting: eslint, prettier, simple-git-hooks, lint-staged

Styling, linting, and formatting libraries can be fully dropped or replaced with alternatives.

Plugins

Additionally, the VSCode plugins listed below are recommended as they can be very helpful when working with this boilerplate.

All Recommended Plugins

Plugin Name	Description
dbaeumer.vscode-eslint	Adds ESLint editor support.
esbenp.prettier-vscode	Adds Prettier editor support.
bradlc.vscode-tailwindcss	Adds tailwindcss editor support.
lightyen.tailwindcss-intellisense-twin	Adds twin.macro editor support.
rust-lang.rust-analyzer	Adds Rust language support.
ink-analyzer.ink-analyzer	Adds ink! language support.
tamasfe.even-better-toml	Adds .toml file support.
gruntfuggly.todo-tree	Lists all TODO comments in your workspace.
wayou.vscode-todo-highlight	Lists all TODO comments in your workspace.
mikestead.dotenv	Adds syntax highlighting for .env files.

FAQs & Troubleshooting 💬

Which package managers are supported? Do I have to use pnpm?

For monorepo workspaces, pnpm is likely the fastest and most reliable choice. When using it though, it's strongly recommended everyone on the team uses it. No installs should be performed nor any other lock files should be committed.

As an alternative, yarn is also supported and can be used for installation. Caveats when using yarn:

• Only the stable version of yarn (currently v3) is supported, not yarn classic (v1).
• yarn.lock files should be committed instead of .pnpm-lock.yaml files.
• The pnpm CLI is still used in many package.json scripts, so these would have to be adjusted manually.

[!IMPORTANT]
As npm lacks support for the workspace import protocol, it's not compatible with ink!athon.

How to solve `Cannot find module './greeter/development.ts'`?

Sometimes, Next.js doesn't pick up changes (i.e. file creations) in the contracts/deployments/{contract}/ folders correctly. E.g., when you just deployed on a local node for the first time and set the frontend's .env.local to connect to the development network.

To fix this, you can delete the build cache at frontend/.next. This is currently the only solution and will force Next.js to rebuild the project and pick up the new files.

[!NOTE]
To prevent this behavior, the contracts/package.json file contains a small postinstall script that creates an empty development.ts file if none exists.

How to approach styling?

This boilerplate currently offers styling via the following options.

• Chakra UI – Component library for quick prototyping e.g. during hackathons)
• twin.macro – Tailwindcss within Styled Components via Emotion (see snippets)
• Standard (S)CSS styles via className and *.module.(s)css files.

[!IMPORTANT]
To reduce the bundle size in production, it's recommended to use either option 1 or 2, but not both.

Can I just use plain TailwindCSS?

The packages mentioned above can be replaced with vanilla TailwindCSS manually without much effort.

[!NOTE]
We are currently transitioning from twin.macro to vanilla TailwindCSS as the new default. This will be reflected in the boilerplate soon.

Resources to learn more about Substrate, ink!, and polkadot.js

• ink! Documentation
• polkadot.js Documentation
• Polkadot Wiki ink! Tools
• Aleph Zero Documentation
• ink!athon Workshop Recording
• ink!athon Telegram Group