Remix

Remix is a popular web-based integrated development environment (IDE) for developing and testing smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. It is an official tool provided by the Ethereum Foundation, and it offers a variety of features that make it easier for developers to write and debug smart contracts. The Filecoin EVM runtime allows developers to use Ethereum tooling, like Remix, with the Filecoin network.

Launch an ERC-20 token

As a simple introduction, we’re going to use Remix to create an ERC-20 token on the Filecoin network. In this guide, we’re using the Hyperspace testnet, but this process is the same for mainnet.

Create a workspace

In Remix, workspaces are where you can create a contract, or group of contracts, for each project. Let’s create a new workspace to create our new ERC-20 token.

  1. Open remix.ethereum.org.

  2. Click the + icon next to Workspaces to create a new workspace:

    Create a new workspace.

  3. In the Choose a template dropdown, select ERC 20.

  4. Select the Mintable checkbox.

  5. Enter a fun name for your token in the Workspace name field. Something like CorgiCoin works fine.

  6. Click OK to create your new workspace.

    Set workspace details.

Customize the contract

The contract template we’re using is pretty simple. We just need to modify a couple of variables.

  1. Under the contract directory, click MyToken.sol.

    Open the MyToken contract.

  2. In the editor panel, replace MyToken with whatever you’d like to name your token. In this example, we’ll use CorgiCoin.

    Change token name.

  3. On the same line, replace the second string with whatever you want the symbol of your token to be. In this example, we’ll use CRG.

    Change token ticket.

That’s all we need to change within this contract. You can see on line 4 that this contract is importing another contract from @openzeppelin for us, meaning that we can keep our custom token contract simple.

Compile

  1. Click the green play symbol at the top of the workspace to compile your contract. You can also press CMD + s on MacOS or CTRL + s on Linux and Windows.

    Compile the contract.

  2. Remix automatically fetches the two import contracts from the top of our .sol contract. You can see these imported contracts under the .deps directory. You can browse the contracts there, but Remix will not save any changes you make.

    Compile and get the dependencies

Deploy

Now that we’ve successfully compiled our contract, we need to deploy it somewhere! This is where our previous MetaMask setup comes into play.

  1. Click the Deploy tab from the left.

    Select the deploy tab.

  2. Under the Environment dropdown, select Injected Provider - MetaMask.

    Select MetaMask within Remix.

  3. MetaMask will open a new window confirming that you want to connect your account to Remix.

  4. Click Next:

    Click next in MetaMask.

  5. Click Connect to connect your tFIL account to Remix.

    Click Connect in MetaMask.

  6. Back in Remix, under the Account field, you’ll see that it says something like 0x11F... (5 ether). This value is 5 tFIL, but Remix doesn’t natively support the Filecoin network, so it doesn’t understand what tFIL is. This isn’t a problem; it’s just a little quirk of using Remix.

    Remix and MetaMask linked.

  7. Under the Contract dropdown, ensure the contract you created is selected.

    Select contract in Remix.

  8. Click Deploy.

    Click Deploy in Remix.

  9. MetaMask will open a window and as you to confirm the transaction. Scroll down and click Confirm to have MetaMask deploy the contract.

    Remix and MetaMask deploying a contract.

  10. Back in Remix, a message at the bottom of the screen shows that the creation of your token is pending.

    Deployment confirmation in Remix.

  11. Wait around 90 seconds for the deployment to complete.

    Deployment complete.

On the Filecoin network, a new set of blocks, also called a tipset, is created every thirty seconds. When deploying a contract, the transaction needs to be received by the network, and then the network needs to confirm the contract. This process takes around one to two tipsets to process – or around 60 to 90 seconds.

Use your contract

Now that we’ve compiled and deployed the contract, it’s time to actually interact with it!

Mint your tokens

Let’s call a method within the deployed contract to mint some tokens.

  1. Back in Remix, open the Deployed Contracts dropdown, within the Deploy sidebar tab.

  2. Expand the mint method. You must fill in two fields here: to and amount.

    Open the mint method.

  3. The to field specifies where address you want these initial tokens sent. Open MetaMask, copy your address, and paste it into this field.

    Enter your address.

  4. This field expects an attoFil value. 1 FIL is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 attoFil. So if you wanted to mint 100 FIL, you would enter 100 followed by 18 zeros: 100000000000000000000.

  5. Click Transact.

    Click transact.

  6. MetaMask will open a window and ask you to confirm the transaction:

    Confirm message in MetaMask.

Again, you must wait for the network to process the transaction, which should take about 90 seconds. You can move on to the next section while you’re waiting.

Add to MetaMask

Currently, MetaMask has no idea what our token is or what it even does. We can fix this by explicitly telling MetaMask the address of our contract.

  1. Go back to Remix and open the Deploy sidebar tab.

  2. Under Deployed Contracts, you should see your contract address at the top. Click the copy icon to copy the address to your clipboard:

    Copy your contract address.

  3. Open MetaMask, select Assets, and click Import your tokens:

    Import your address details.

  4. In the Token contract address field, paste the contract address you just copied from Remix and then click Add custom token. MetaMask should autofill the rest of the information based on what it can find from the Filecoin network.

    Complete your asset details.

  5. Click Import token:

  6. You should now be able to see that you have 100 of your tokens within your MetaMask wallet!

    MetaMask showing a new token.

And that’s it! Deploying an ERC-20 token on Filecoin is simple!