Top smart contract tools that will skyrocket your blockchain development project

Top smart contract tools that will skyrocket your blockchain development project

In the early years of blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts, developers had to rely on nobody but themselves. The list of automation tools for smart contract creation was pretty scarce. Well, what else to expect? The whole industry was pretty young then. At the same time, the Ethereum programming language Solidity has always been quite complex. As a result, smart contracts were swarming with bugs. As a result, many hacks and code exploits took place.

Now the situation has improved. Developers have a plethora of ready solutions. They can create smart contracts and test their applicability. What’s more, they can reveal potential code errors to prevent security gaps. This article aims to give some tips on the best smart contract tools that you can start using right now.

Stage 1: DEVELOP SMART CONTRACT LIKE A PRO

The market offers a huge number of various tools to ease smart contract developers’ lives. One can find solutions for any task. There are small tools for solving specific questions and huge multi-functional platforms to cover a significant part of the development process. We have listed some of the most useful ones below:

• Truffle.

This is a robust smart contract development platform that can be a good assistant to any developer operating on Ethereum.

• Ganache.

This tool provides you with your own blockchain to be used on almost any gadget. You can create and test smart contracts right on the platform. Besides, you can investigate errors and make necessary corrections in a completely risk-free environment. Ganache comes in handy together with the previous tool is it represents a part of the Truffle suite.

• Metamask.

This browser wallet was initially fit for storing ERC20 tokens only. Yet, the market evolves and new more powerful blockchains emerge. Metamask has also added the support of BSC, Polygon, and many other viable blockchain solutions. Developers can select from the variety of test wallets to safely check their dApps.

• Remix IDE.

When it comes to compiling and debugging Ethereum smart contracts, Remix IDE is one of the best choices. This open-source JavaScript-based compiler can help you create code with Solidity. It comes with a robust collection of plug-ins and libraries that can ease the process even more.

Stage 2: AUDIT THE CODE BEFORE DEPLOYMENT

Creating a smart contract is only the first step on your journey to the working dApp. Auditing your smart contract is the next stage. It can help you reveal the bugs and errors in the code. This is crucial for the security of your blockchain solution. Remember, even a small typo in the code may result in a security gap. Protecting your application from security incidents is even more important for the DeFi sector as you operate with customers’ funds.
A smart contract audit can help you reveal these bugs and protect your dApp from code exploits. Here are some tools and services that can be helpful:

• Coinscope.

This is a free online tool that can help you analyze the code of a smart contract and find out if it contains any errors. Put in the address of the contract on Ethereum, Polygon, or any other supported blockchain and get a quick overview of its security. This tool can be particularly useful for investors who make an initial investigation of a project.

• Scamsniper.

This is one more free smart contract checker from Coinscope. It offers indicators such as honeypot checks, liquidity checks, and public audits of a selected token. It only works with BSC-based smart contracts, tough.

• Tokenguard.

Teams who look for comprehensive auditing solutions may need something more than a quick overview of their code. Tokenguard represents a multi-functional dashboard for the security analysis of smart contracts. Paste the contract address and get a detailed report on its security in 3 hours. You don’t need to know how to read a code as it provides you with easy token scoring. Besides, it updates 24/7. Thus, if it discovers any new vulnerability, you will get an instant alert about it.

STAGE 3:ENHANCE PROTECTION

Smart contract auditing is one of the most important aspects to enhance the security of your smart contract. But it’s not the only one. Indeed, there are many other aspects that you should check before launching the smart contract on the mainnet. The following tools can help you boost the security of your dApp even more:

• MythX.

Detecting vulnerabilities while writing code is much more efficient than trying to identify them in a deployed contract, isn’t it? This is precisely what MythX does. This platform features a set of tools and analysis methods such as fuzzing, static analysis, and symbolic execution. It can be integrated with Remix or called right from the CLI to help you detect the errors in the code right while you work on it.

• Mythril Classic.

This is an open-source EVM bytecode security analysis tool that is available on GitHub. Yet, keep in mind that it can only help you with the basic well-known security issues. If your smart contract contains some business logic errors, it won’t be of much use.

• Manticore.

This is yet another open-source symbolic execution tool for the analysis of smart contracts and binaries. It’s been working for a while already and has proven to be quite useful in smart contract development.
Final thoughts
The list of tools that we’ve reviewed in this article is far from comprehensive. Yet, this guide can give a good start for any team of developers who want to improve the security of their smart contracts. Besides, you can make your own research and check such tools as Drizzle, Ethers.js, web3.js, Embark, Infura and OpenZeppelin. The last one is already a bit outdated, but still, pretty useful.