Cardano

This guide will walk you through the steps to create a local FireFly development environment running against the preview node.

Previous steps: Install the FireFly CLI¶

If you haven't set up the FireFly CLI already, please go back to the Getting Started guide and read the section on how to Install the FireFly CLI.

← ① Install the FireFly CLI

Create the stack¶

A Cardano stack can be run in two different ways; using a local Cardano node, or a remote Blockfrost address.

Option 1: Use a local Cardano node¶

NOTE: The cardano-node communicates over a Unix socket, so this will not work on Windows.

Start a local Cardano node. The fastest way to do this is to use mithril to bootstrap the node.

For an example of how to bootstrap and run the Cardano node in Docker, see the firefly-cardano repo.

The cardano-node exposes a Unix socket named node.socket. Pass that to firefly-cli. The example below uses firefly-cli to - Create a new Cardano-based stack named dev. - Connect to the local Cardano node, which is running in the preview network.

ff init cardano dev \
    --network preview \
    --socket /path/to/ipc/node.socket

Option 2: Use Blockfrost¶

The Cardano connector can also use the paid Blockfrost API in place of a local Cardano node.

The example below uses firefly-cli to - Create a new Cardano-based stack named dev - Use the given blockfrost key for the preview network.

ff init cardano dev \
    --network preview \
    --blockfrost-key previewXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Option 3: Use Blockfrost RYO¶

You can run a Blockfrost API provider for free on your own infrastructure. This is called Blockfrost Run-Your-Own or Blockfrost RYO. See the service's GitHub page for more information on this.

The example below uses firefly-cli to - Create a new Cardano-based stack named dev - Connect to a Blockfrost RYO instance running at http://localhost:3000

ff init cardano dev \
    --network preview \
    --blockfrost-base-url http://localhost:3000

Start the stack¶

Now you should be able to start your stack by running:

ff start dev

After some time it should print out the following:

Web UI for member '0': http://127.0.0.1:5000/ui
Sandbox UI for member '0': http://127.0.0.1:5109


To see logs for your stack run:

ff logs dev

Get some ADA¶

Now that you have a stack, you need some seed funds to get started. Your stack was created with a wallet already (these are free to create in Cardano). To get the address, you can run

ff accounts list dev

The response will look like

[
  {
    "address": "addr_test1...",
    "privateKey": "..."
  }
]

If you're developing against a testnet such as preview, you can receive funds from the testnet faucet. Pass the address from that response to the faucet.

Next steps: Develop a contract¶

Now that you have a stack running, you're ready to start developing contracts for it. See the Cardano custom contract guide for more information.