Intro to Hardhat

VeChain Smart Contract Deployment: Hardhat Guide

Smart contracts are the backbone of every decentralized application. VeChainThor supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), allowing Solidity developers to write and deploy smart contracts using familiar tools like Hardhat. In this guide, you’ll walk through the exact setup required to compile and deploy a Solidity smart contract on VeChain’s testnet using the “Buy Me a Coffee” contract as your first real-world example. We’ll also cover how to make your smart contracts compatible with VeChain, as there are some differences compared to Solidity and EVM on Ethereum. Whether you’re new to blockchain development or coming from Ethereum, this article will get you started building on VeChain.

What You’ll Learn

• Set up your Hardhat environment inside a pre-existing frontend project

• Compile and deploy a contract using VeChain’s EVM-compatible testnet

• Configure Hardhat to use VeChain network settings

Deploying to VeChain

For this tutorial, we’ll be using Hardhat, the Ethereum development environment that allows you to write, test, and deploy smart contracts. Since VeChain is EVM-compatible, Hardhat can be used with minimal configuration to compile Solidity contracts and deploy them directly to the VeChainThor blockchain. It also supports TypeScript and plugins that make the development experience smoother and more scalable. 

Regardless of what OS you use, you’ll need to have:

• Node (install the latest version with `nvm install node`)

• TypeScript (`npm install -g typescript && tsc --init`)

• Hardhat