A Hardhat Plugin For Replicable Deployments And Easy Testing

Note: This is the documentation for hardhat-deploy v2 that works with hardhat v3

Documentation for hardhat-deploy v1 can be found on the v1 branch

What is hardhat-deploy?

hardhat-deploy makes it easy for you to deploy your EVM smart contracts across many chains while keeping track of them and replicating the same environment for testing.

It adds a mechanism to associate names to addresses, so test and deployment scripts can be reconfigured by simply changing the address a name points to. This results in much clearer tests and deployment scripts — no more accounts[0] in your code.

Why hardhat-deploy + rocketh?

While Hardhat's official Ignition plugin offers a robust deployment system, it comes with a rigid DSL that limits flexibility. hardhat-deploy + rocketh provides:

• Intuitive Deployment Scripts: Write deployment logic in plain TypeScript without learning a new DSL.
• Browser-Compatible Deployments: Thanks to rocketh's framework-agnostic design, your deployment scripts can be executed directly in the browser — enabling in-app deployments, testing in web environments, and seamless integration with web frontends.
• Hot Contract Replacement (HCR): The equivalent of HMR (Hot Module Replacement) for smart contracts. Edit your contracts and see changes live while developing your app or game using proxy patterns with conventions that make it work seamlessly.
• Flexible Proxy Patterns: Declarative proxy deployment with deployViaProxy for upgradeable contracts, including support for OpenZeppelin transparent proxies.
• Diamond Support: Deploy EIP-2535 Diamonds declaratively — specify the new state and let hardhat-deploy generate the diamondCut for you.
• Full Control: Access to all deployment parameters and lifecycle hooks.

Key Features

• Chain configuration export (via @rocketh/export) — listing deployed contracts' addresses and their ABIs (useful for web apps)
• Library linking at the time of deployment
• Deterministic deployment across networks
• Support for specific deploy scripts per environment (L1 vs L2 for example)
• Deployment dependency system — only deploy what is needed
• Deployment retrying (by saving pending tx) — recover confidently from interruptions
• Deployments as test fixtures via Hardhat helpers with caching optimization
• Helpers to read and execute transactions on deployed contracts by name
• Save metadata of deployed contracts for full verification via Sourcify or Etherscan
• Contract verification submission at any time since all necessary info is saved
• Support for Hardhat's fork feature — access deployments even when running through fork

Architecture

Version 2 is a full rewrite that has been used in production for several years. It is fully modular, making it much easier to contribute new deployment mechanisms.

Under the hood, hardhat-deploy uses rocketh, a framework-agnostic system that provides a minimal API to save and load deployments. Everything else is handled by external modules:

• @rocketh/deploy — provides a deploy function to deploy contracts
• @rocketh/proxy — deploy proxies declaratively like in hardhat-deploy v1
• @rocketh/diamond — deploy diamonds declaratively
• @rocketh/read-execute — helpers for reading and executing transactions
• @rocketh/viem — viem client integration

You can also provide your own modules for advanced use cases.

Quick Example

import { deployScript, artifacts } from "../rocketh/deploy.js";

export default deployScript(
  async ({ deployViaProxy, namedAccounts }) => {
    const { deployer, admin } = namedAccounts;

    await deployViaProxy(
      "GreetingsRegistry",
      {
        account: deployer,
        artifact: artifacts.GreetingsRegistry,
        args: ["prefix:"],
      },
      {
        owner: admin,
      },
    );
  },
  { tags: ["GreetingsRegistry"] },
);

Documentation

Please find the full documentation here

AI-Assisted Migration

If you're migrating from hardhat-deploy v1 to v2 and want to use AI to help with the process, check out our SKILL.md file. This comprehensive guide is designed for AI assistants and includes detailed instructions for systematic migration, code transformation rules, and troubleshooting guidance.

Template

Get started quickly with the template-ethereum-contracts template that provides a production-ready setup with hardhat-deploy and rocketh.

License

MIT

Sponsor

If you find this project useful, please consider sponsoring it! Your support helps me continue developing and maintaining this tool.