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Welcome to the Base deployment quickstart guide! This comprehensive walkthrough will help you set up your environment and deploy smart contracts on Base. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting out, this guide has got you covered.

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What You’ll Achieve

By the end of this quickstart, you’ll be able to:
  • Set up your development environment to deploy on Base
  • Deploy your smart contracts to Base
  • Connect your frontend to your smart contracts
Why Base?Base is a fast, low-cost, builder-friendly Ethereum L2 built to bring the next billion users onchain. By following this guide, you’ll join a vibrant ecosystem of developers, creators, and innovators who are building a global onchain economy.

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Set Up Your Development Environment

  1. Create a new project directory
mkdir my-base-project && cd my-base-project
  1. Install Foundry, a powerful framework for smart contract development
curl -L https://foundry.paradigm.xyz | bash
foundryup
This installs Foundry and updates it to the latest version.
  1. Initialize a new Solidity project
forge init
Your Foundry project is now ready. You’ll find an example contract in the src directory, which you can replace with your own contracts. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll use the Counter contract provided in /src/Counter.sol
Foundry provides a suite of tools for Ethereum application development, including Forge (for testing), Cast (for interacting with the chain), and Anvil (for setting up a local node). You can learn more about Foundry here.

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Configure Foundry with Base

To deploy your smart contracts to Base, you need two key components:
  1. A node connection to interact with the Base network
  2. A funded private key to deploy the contract
Let’s set up both of these:

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1. Set up your node connection

  1. Create a .env file in your project’s root directory
  2. Add the Base network RPC URL to your .env file
BASE_RPC_URL="https://mainnet.base.org"
BASE_SEPOLIA_RPC_URL="https://sepolia.base.org"
  1. Load your environment variables
source .env
Base Sepolia is the test network for Base, which we will use for the rest of this guide. You can obtain free Base Sepolia ETH from one of the faucets listed here.

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2. Secure your private key

  1. Store your private key in Foundry’s secure keystore
cast wallet import deployer --interactive
  1. When prompted enter your private key and a password.
Your private key is stored in ~/.foundry/keystores which is not tracked by git.
Never share or commit your private key. Always keep it secure and handle with care.

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Deploy Your Contracts

Now that your environment is set up, let’s deploy your contracts to Base Sepolia.
  1. Use the following command to compile and deploy your contract
forge create ./src/Counter.sol:Counter --rpc-url $BASE_SEPOLIA_RPC_URL --account deployer
Note the format of the contract being deployed is <contract-path>:<contract-name>.
  1. After successful deployment, the transaction hash will be printed to the console output
  2. Copy the deployed contract address and add it to your .env file 
COUNTER_CONTRACT_ADDRESS="0x..."
  1. Load the new environment variable
source .env

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Verify Your Deployment

To ensure your contract was deployed successfully:
  1. Check the transaction on Sepolia Basescan.
  2. Use the cast command to interact with your deployed contract from the command line
cast call $COUNTER_CONTRACT_ADDRESS "number()(uint256)" --rpc-url $BASE_SEPOLIA_RPC_URL
This will return the initial value of the Counter contract’s number storage variable, which will be 0. Congratulations! You’ve deployed your smart contracts to Base Sepolia!

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Next Steps

  • Use wagmi or viem to connect your frontend to your contracts.
  • Learn more about interacting with your contracts in the command line using Foundry from our Foundry tutorial.