#Hardhat's tutorial for beginners

Welcome to our beginners guide to Ethereum contracts and dApp development. This tutorial is aimed at hackathon participants who are getting setup to quickly build something from scratch.

To orchestrate this process we're going to use Hardhat, a development environment that facilitates building on Ethereum. It helps developers manage and automate the recurring tasks that are inherent to the process of building smart contracts and dApps, as well as easily introducing more functionality around this workflow. This means compiling and testing at the very core.

Hardhat also comes built-in with Hardhat Network, a local Ethereum network designed for development. It allows you to deploy your contracts, run your tests and debug your code.

In this tutorial we'll guide you through:

• Setting up your Node.js environment for Ethereum development
• Creating and configuring a Hardhat project
• The basics of a Solidity smart contract that implements a token
• Writing automated tests for your contract using Ethers.js and Waffle
• Debugging Solidity with console.log() using Hardhat Network
• Deploying your contract to Hardhat Network and Ethereum testnets

To follow this tutorial you should be able to:

• Write code in JavaScript
• Operate a terminal
• Use git
• Understand the basics of how smart contracts work
• Set up a Metamask wallet

If you can't do any of the above, follow the links and take some time to learn the basics.