The Hardhat Playbook: Practical Workflows for Testing, Deploying, and Automating Ethereum Smart Contracts

The Hardhat Playbook: Practical Workflows for Testing, Deploying, and Automating Ethereum Smart Contracts is a hands-on guide for engineers, architects, and advanced practitioners who want to master real-world smart contract development with Hardhat. Beginning with a clear view of Hardhat’s place in the Ethereum ecosystem, the book demystifies the EVM, demonstrates project bootstrapping for large codebases, and shows how to integrate robust TypeScript workflows to keep complex projects maintainable and scalable.

From there, the playbook dives into advanced configuration patterns, plugin system orchestration, and custom workflow automation that accelerate developer productivity. It covers modern Solidity features, pragmatic gas-optimization techniques, artifact management, and pathways to formal verification, while presenting rigorous QA methods—including deterministic and property-based testing and continuous coverage—to ensure reliable, auditable code. Practical debugging and performance-profiling strategies equip teams to diagnose issues and optimize deployments with precision.

Reflecting production realities, the book lays out security-audit automation, incident-response playbooks, and deployment strategies for multi-network environments, with clear guidance on integrating Hardhat into DevOps pipelines. A collection of real-world case studies in DeFi, DAOs, NFT standards, and cross-chain patterns demonstrates how teams apply these workflows to ship resilient, high-performance systems. Whether launching greenfield projects or scaling enterprise platforms, this playbook is an indispensable companion for engineers building on Ethereum.