Setting up your enviroment for Contract-enabled Cosmos Networks

In the last blog, we introduced CosmWasm and Cosmos SDK. In this blog we will set up the required tools. Which are -

1. Starport: A tool to ease development with Cosmos SDK
2. Wasmd: A Smart-Contract enabled Local Netowrk
3. CosmWasm Toolset: To write and compile the contracts

Installing Starport

Starport is an interface to the Cosmos SDK which lets you build networks with simple CLI commands.

You can use Starport in your browser, but it's not recommended for this article since we will be going back and forth with the code quite a bit.

If you're on Windows, try using WSL2.

Install the following tools-

1. Golang >=1.16
2. Node.js >=12.19.0
3. Protocol Buffer Compiler

GoLang is pretty easy to install, but make sure your version is up to date!

rm -rf /usr/local/go && tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.16.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

From here, you now need to add this to the path.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

If you thought this was easy, wait till you install NodeJS.

sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm

Finally, to install protocol buffer compiler, run

 apt install -y protobuf-compiler

You would need to install Rust.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Once installed, run the following to check

rustup default stable
cargo version
# If this is lower than 1.47.0+, update
rustup update stable

rustup target list --installed
rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Let's now go ahead and install Starport.

curl https://get.starport.network/starport@v0.13.1! | bash

If that didn't work for you, you can also install it manuall using make on the Git repo and adding it into the path after solving all the errors.

Setting up Wasmd (Option #1)

Wasmd is a binary for a network that has CosmWasm enabled. When you run up a new Starport chain using starport app <repo link>, it does not have CosmWasm enabled by default. We will learn it towards the end, in Preparing to deploy your contracts.

Instead of setting up a local WasmD node, you can also use the musselnet testnet. More on that in the next section.

Now that we have everything needed, let's go ahead and install wasmd.

git clone https://github.com/CosmWasm/wasmd.git
cd wasmd
git checkout v0.14.0
make install

Please note that 0.14.0 is the latest release. Head over to the repo to figure out the latest release during the time of your reading.

Now let's check if we have installed wasmd correctly.

wasmd version

Finally, we need to prepare our local environment to make sure wasmd runs smooth.

# default home is ~/.wasmd
# if you want to setup multiple apps on your local make sure to change this value
APP_HOME="~/.wasmd"
CLI_HOME="~/.wasmd"
RPC="http://localhost:26657"
# initialize wasmd configuration files
wasmd init localnet --chain-id localnet --home ${APP_HOME}

# add minimum gas prices config to app configuration file
sed -i -r 's/minimum-gas-prices = ""/minimum-gas-prices = "0.025umayo"/' ${APP_HOME}/config/app.toml

# add your wallet addresses to genesis
wasmd add-genesis-account $(wasmd keys show -a fred) 10000000000umayo,10000000000stake --home ${APP_HOME}
wasmd add-genesis-account $(wasmd keys show -a thief) 10000000000umayo,10000000000stake --home ${APP_HOME}

# add fred's address as validator's address
wasmd gentx --name fred --home ${APP_HOME}

# collect gentxs to genesis
wasmd collect-gentxs --home ${APP_HOME}

# validate the genesis file
wasmd validate-genesis --home ${APP_HOME}

# run the node
wasmd start --home ${APP_HOME}

Here we have configured a home directory, added a minimum gas price, added a genesis account for the genesis transaction, validated it and started the Blockchain node.

With all that done, you now have set up your environment for running Smart Contracts on a CosmWasm-enabled chain. For now, we will use Wasmd, but then shift to our own Starport network.

Using Musselnet (Option #2)

For using musselnet, you'll need the following:

1. An RPC Endpoint
2. A Faucet for MusselNet - with two tokens, ufrites (for becoming a validator) and umayo.
3. Finally, a REST endpoint for Musselnet, found here.

We will also need to set up CLI.

source <(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CosmWasm/testnets/master/musselnet/defaults.env)

We also need to set up Node REPL.

According to the documentations, this is out of date.

npx @cosmjs/cli@^0.26 --init https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CosmWasm/testnets/master/musselnet/cli_helper.ts

Add the keys fred, bob and thief.

# add wallets for testing
wasmd keys add fred
>
{
  "name": "fred",
  "type": "local",
  "address": "wasm13nt9rxj7v2ly096hm8qsyfjzg5pr7vn5saqd50",
  "pubkey": "wasmpub1addwnpepqf4n9afaefugnfztg7udk50duwr4n8p7pwcjlm9tuumtlux5vud6qvfgp9g",
  "mnemonic": "hobby bunker rotate piano satoshi planet network verify else market spring toward pledge turkey tip slim word jaguar congress thumb flag project chalk inspire"
}

wasmd keys add bob
wasmd keys add thief

Add some tokens into your wallet.

JSON=$(jq -n --arg addr $(wasmd keys show -a fred) '{"denom":"umayo","address":$addr}') && curl -X POST --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data "$JSON" https://faucet.musselnet.cosmwasm.com/credit
JSON=$(jq -n --arg addr $(wasmd keys show -a thief) '{"denom":"umayo","address":$addr}') && curl -X POST --header "Content-Type: application/json" --data "$JSON" https://faucet.musselnet.cosmwasm.com/credit

Testing out the REPL (Don't worry too much about this - yet)

// Create or load account
const mnemonic = loadOrCreateMnemonic('fred.key')
mnemonicToAddress(mnemonic)

const { address, client } = await connect(mnemonic, {})
address

client.getAccount()
// if empty - this only works with CosmWasm
hitFaucet(defaultFaucetUrl, address, 'FRITES')
client.getAccount()

And we should be done! We will start with the development next article onwards!