Hardhat Toolbox v3.0.0: ethers v6, bigints and more!

This new major version of Hardhat Toolbox is based on ethers v6 and uses new versions of the hardhat-ethers, hardhat-chai-matchers and typechain plugins.

Using in a new project

Nothing has changed in how you use the Toolbox for a new project: if you initialize one with the latest version of Hardhat, then this version of the Toolbox will be used. Check our Setting up a project guide for the complete instructions.

Upgrading an existing project

To use this new version of the Toolbox in an existing project, you need to upgrade the Toolbox and its relevant peer dependencies.

If you are using npm 7 or later, you just need to upgrade the Toolbox and npm will handle the rest:

npm install @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox@3

If you are using yarn or an older version of npm, you’ll need to manually upgrade all the relevant packages and remove the ones that are no longer needed:

# upgrade relevant packages
yarn add @nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox@3 @nomicfoundation/hardhat-chai-matchers@2 @nomicfoundation/hardhat-ethers@3 @nomicfoundation/hardhat-verify @typechain/ethers-v6 @typechain/hardhat@8 ethers@6

# remove packages that are no longer needed
yarn remove @ethersproject/abi @ethersproject/providers @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers @nomiclabs/hardhat-etherscan @typechain/ethers-v5

What’s new?

Ethers v6 has several changes with respect to v5. These are some of them, but check their migration guide for the full details.

Native bigints

One of the most important changes in v6 is that now native bigints are used instead of BigNumber objects. For example, checking if an address has a positive amount of tokens is done like this in v5:

const balance = await token.balanceOf(someAddress)

if (balance.gt(0)) {
  // ...
}

While in v6 you would do it this way:

const balance = await token.balanceOf(someAddress)

if (balance > 0n) {
  // ...
}

For more info on native bigints, check the MDN page.

ethers.utils

In ethers v6, ethers.utils doesn’t exist anymore. In many cases, just removing .utils is enough to adapt your code, but other functions were renamed. Again, check ethers’s migration guide to learn more.

Signers and contracts can be used as addresses

Sending ether to a contract was done like this in ethers v5:

await signer.sendTransaction({
  to: contract.address,
  value: ethers.utils.parseEther("0.1")
})

In ethers v6, you can just use the contract instance:

await signer.sendTransaction({
  to: contract,
  value: ethers.parseEther("0.1")
})

Address property of contracts

Contract instances in ethers v5 had a .address property with the address of the contract. In ethers v6 this was replaced by an async .getAddress() function. That is, before you would do this:

console.log("Contract deployed at", contract.address)

Now you have to do this:

console.log("Contract deployed at", await contract.getAddress())

Alternatively, you can use the .target property, but keep in mind that this might not work in some scenarios (for example, if you create a contract instance with an ENS address).

.deployed method

The .deployed() method of contracts is now called .waitForDeployment()

Network helpers re-export

When the Toolbox is installed using npm 7 or later, its peer dependencies are automatically installed. However, these dependencies won't be listed in the package.json. As a result, directly importing the Network Helpers can be problematic for certain tools or IDEs. To address this issue, this new version of the Toolbox re-exports the Hardhat Network Helpers. You can use them like this now:

import helpers from "@nomicfoundation/hardhat-toolbox/network-helpers";