Deploying smart contracts using scripts

You can write scripts that use Hardhat and use them for basic smart contract deployments.

In this guide we’ll show you how to run the same deployment as the Ignition Module included in the sample projects, but using viem and ethers.js.

We assume you followed the instructions in this section first.

Writing a deployment script with viem

To build a deployment script using viem, create the scripts/deploy-counter.ts file with this content:

import { network } from "hardhat";

const { viem, networkName } = await network.connect();
const client = await viem.getPublicClient();

console.log(`Deploying Counter to ${networkName}...`);

const counter = await viem.deployContract("Counter");

console.log("Counter address:", counter.address);

console.log("Calling counter.incBy(5)");
const tx = await counter.write.incBy([5n]);

console.log("Waiting for the counter.incBy(5) tx to confirm");
await client.waitForTransactionReceipt({ hash: tx, confirmations: 1 });

console.log("Deployment successful!");

Writing a deployment script with ethers.js

To build a deployment script using ethers, create the scripts/deploy-counter.ts file with this content:

import { network } from "hardhat";

const { ethers, networkName } = await network.connect();

console.log(`Deploying Counter to ${networkName}...`);

const counter = await ethers.deployContract("Counter");

console.log("Waiting for the deployment tx to confirm");
await counter.waitForDeployment();

console.log("Counter address:", await counter.getAddress());

console.log("Calling counter.incBy(5)");
const tx = await counter.incBy(5n);

console.log("Waiting for the counter.incBy(5) tx to confirm");
await tx.wait();

console.log("Deployment successful!");

Running your deployment script

To run your deployment, use hardhat run <script>.

Make sure you use the production Build Profile so your contracts get optimized for production and compiled using Isolated Builds.

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy-counter.ts --build-profile production --network sepolia

pnpm hardhat run scripts/deploy-counter.ts --build-profile production --network sepolia

yarn hardhat run scripts/deploy-counter.ts --build-profile production --network sepolia

Input your keystore password and wait for the deployment to complete.

Disadvantages of deploying with scripts

Deploying with a script can be simple in basic cases like the ones shown here, but doesn’t scale well to mid-size and larger projects.

Some of the problems are:

They can’t recover from errors automatically
They can’t be resumed after being updated or fixed (everything will be redeployed!)
They don’t have a standardized format to track and version your deployment results
They are harder to integrate with TypeScript tests