Consider making EthersProviderWrapper a StaticJsonRpcProvider

[maraoz]

Currently, EthersProviderWrapper inherits from JsonRpcProvider. See: https://github.com/nomiclabs/hardhat/blob/51cb14a5d8bdb90c11529322bc76b45adbab2e20/packages/hardhat-core/test/internal/hardhat-network/helpers/ethers-provider-wrapper.ts#L8

This makes client code make an eth_chainId call before every use of the provider.
See: ethers-io/ethers.js#901

Given hardhat tasks and scripts usually run in the same network (or at least that's my case, and kind if implied by the --network option in most commands), consider changing inheritance to StaticJsonRpcProvider, which only performs the eth_chainId call at the beginning. This could potentially save lots of requests in most cases. I managed to get my infura requests down 50% by using my own StaticJsonRpcProvider instead of relying on hardhat's .

[fvictorio]

This makes a lot of sense. I think this is a somewhat new provider, so we should check when it was added and how we should bump the ethers peer dependency of the plugin.

[github-actions]

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[leckylao]

Bumping the priority on this as it greatly impacts our running cost, as you could see the top 1 RPC call is chainId which can be removed as it's running on the same network and it would greatly reduce everyone's running cost.