Skip to content

Integrating with Hardhat

Integrating Forta in your existing Hardhat project is easier than ever with the Forta Hardhat plugin. You can now keep your security/operational monitoring logic right next to the smart contracts they will be monitoring. The plugin provides convenient access to the Forta bot development tools to manage the bot lifecycle using Hardhat tasks.

This plugin uses the forta-agent package to programmatically invoke commands. For a more comprehensive walkthrough of bot development, we recommend going through the build your first detection bot guide as well.

Installation

You can install the Forta Hardhat plugin with the following command:

npm install -D hardhat-forta

Remember to import the plugin in your hardhat.config.js with the line:

require("hardhat-forta");

Or if you are using Typescript, then update your hardhat.config.ts instead:

import "hardhat-forta";

To verify the installation, run npx hardhat to see the available tasks. You should see the following tasks:

  • forta:init - initialize a sample bot project
  • forta:init:template - initialize a bot project from existing templates
  • forta:run - run a bot project with blockchain data
  • forta:test - execute unit tests for a bot project
  • forta:publish - publish a bot to the Forta network
  • forta:push - build a bot Docker image and push it to the repository
  • forta:disable - disable a bot on the Forta network
  • forta:enable - enable a bot on the Forta network
  • forta:keyfile - print out keyfile information

Getting started

You can initialize a sample project using the forta:init task, but to create something more useful you can use the forta:init:template task:

npx hardhat forta:init:template

This will prompt you with a list of templates (i.e. low-code bots) to choose from. Some examples include monitoring whether an account's ETH balance has fallen below a threshold, or if an address that recently interacted with Tornado Cash is now interacting with your contracts.

You can select one or more templates from the list. They will be unpacked into a folder called agents in your Hardhat project. Each template comes with a SETUP.md file that you should use to configure the bot's behaviour. All you need to do is modify a single JSON config file.

If this is your first time initializing a Forta bot project on your machine, a keyfile and a forta.config.json file will be generated for you. You will be prompted to enter a password for the keyfile (to be used later for bot deployment).

Testing your bot

You can now run the bot against real blockchain data using the command:

npx hardhat forta:run

If you have multiple bots, you will be prompted to select which one to run. By default, the bot will point to Ethereum mainnet using the public Cloudflare RPC endpoint (you can change this by setting the jsonRpcUrl value in the forta.config.json file located at ~/.forta). Once running, you should see output printed to the console showing the bot scanning blocks and transactions. Awesome! You can also use this command to run the bot against specific blocks and transactions using commandline args.

There is also a command to run unit tests of the bot project:

npx hardhat forta:test

Again, you may be prompted to select a specific bot. This command will run any unit tests present in the bot folder.

To learn more about testing bots, check out this section.

Deploying your bot

Once you are happy with the bot behaviour, you can deploy this bot to the production Forta network using the command:

npx hardhat forta:publish

You may be prompted to select a specific bot if you have multiple. This command builds a Docker image for the bot and pushes it to a public repository. The image will then be registered in the Bot Registry smart contract. This step requires having MATIC tokens on Polygon mainnet (see here on how to acquire MATIC tokens).

Another way to deploy your bot is using the Forta App. To learn more about deploying bots (including how to enable logging), check out this section.

Subscribing to alerts

After your bot is deployed, you can view the alerts it generates using Forta App. You can search by your bot's ID or a contract address.

Alternatively, you can query for alerts programmatically using the Forta API.

To learn more about subscribing to alerts, check out this section.

Maintaining your bot

You may need to update your bot code at some point in the future, or even disable it. This can all be done using the provided Hardhat tasks as well e.g npx hardhat forta:disable.

To learn more about maintaining your bot, check out this section.