Harry Wang

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to become a self-made millionaire in 30 minutes :)

......

by issuing 1 million ERC20 tokens on Ethereum (or Polygon) with gas estimation and contract verification, and then optionally listing the token on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap.

It cost me $99.6 to deploy the contract to issue 1 million Wild Idiot Token (WIT) on Ethereum, which you can check at Etherscan.

According to https://etherscan.io/tokens, there are 528,938 ERC20 tokens as of 5/1/2022 and you will find how easy it is to issue one of your own after this tutorial.

The followings are used in this tutorial:

Solidity
Hardhat
Alchemy
OpenZeppelin
ethers.js

Get the code from this repo.

If you have an account with some ETH, you only need to do the followings:

Get a free RPC link from https://www.alchemy.com/
Clone the repo and install the packages
Setup the environment variables
Set the token name, symbol, and initial supply
Run one command to deploy the tokens

All above could be done in 30 minutes or less.

Setup

Clone the repo and switch to the folder:

git clone https://github.com/harrywang/wit.git
cd wit

Install the packages:

npm install ethers hardhat @nomiclabs/hardhat-waffle ethereum-waffle chai @nomiclabs/hardhat-ethers @openzeppelin/contracts hardhat-gas-reporter @nomiclabs/hardhat-etherscan

Environment Variables

Create .env file in the root folder with the following environment variables - MAKE SURE to gitignore this file.

get the private key of the account that you want to use to deploy to Ethereum or Polygon (How-to).
get free RPC links for different networks from https://www.alchemy.com/
if you want to use gas estimation, get a free API key from https://coinmarketcap.com/, see more instructions here

# private key for deploying the contract
PRIVATE_KEY='fd89bdcxxxx'

# API Key for estimate gas using CoinMarketCap
CMC_API_KEY='55578fe5-xxxx'

# API Key for verifying contract on Etherscan or Polygonscan
ETHERSCAN_API_KEY='8EFN286J3Uxxx'
POLYGONSCAN_API_KEY='KWD8AESGxxx'

ENVIRONMENT='dev'
ALCHEMY_URL_MUMBAI='https://polygon-mumbai.g.alchemy.com/v2/p0CT1Tty3v5Pxxxx'
ALCHEMY_URL_POLYGON='https://polygon-mainnet.g.alchemy.com/v2/iz7EgWttP1xxxx'
ALCHEMY_URL_ETHEREUM='https://eth-mainnet.alchemyapi.io/v2/2Y8ep8l3YLtrdxxxx'

Contract Testing and Gas Estimation

compile the contract:

npx hardhat compile

test the contracts, which also compile the contract:

npx hardhat test

a local node is started in the background
the first test account 0x...2266 is used to deploy the contract
a gas estimation report is also generated, check my documentation for that here

Contract Deployment

Local Node

start the local node:

npx hardhat node

20 test accounts have been created:

WARNING: These accounts, and their private keys, are publicly known.
Any funds sent to them on Mainnet or any other live network WILL BE LOST.

Account #0: 0xf39fd6e51aad88f6f4ce6ab8827279cfffb92266 (10000 ETH)
Private Key: 0xac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80

Account #1: 0x70997970c51812dc3a010c7d01b50e0d17dc79c8 (10000 ETH)
Private Key: 0x59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d

Deploy the contract to the local node - the first account is used to pay the gas fee:

NOTE: Every time you run this command, the contract is deployed again into a different address

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network localhost

Deploying contract with the account: 0xf39Fd6e51aad88F6F4ce6aB8827279cffFb92266
Token deployed to: 0x5FbDB2315678afecb367f032d93F642f64180aa3

and the test node terminal console has the output:

web3_clientVersion (2)
eth_accounts
eth_chainId
eth_accounts
eth_blockNumber
eth_chainId (2)
eth_estimateGas
eth_getBlockByNumber
eth_feeHistory
eth_sendTransaction
  Contract deployment: Token
  Contract address:    0x5fbdb2315678afecb367f032d93f642f64180aa3
  Transaction:         0xa3742b40578b69e68ea4d66da2e4f9054a53e9e96445ffb4afb87915b64557ef
  From:                0xf39fd6e51aad88f6f4ce6ab8827279cfffb92266
  Value:               0 ETH
  Gas used:            630763 of 630763
  Block #1:            0xacdfb348103f3ff6840e71faf92e8478fa8ce3e8140a12e214404fd24dd854d9

eth_chainId
eth_getTransactionByHash
eth_chainId
eth_getTransactionReceipt

Mumbai

Deploy on Mumbai testnet:

get some test MATIC from https://faucet.polygon.technology/
Change the .env to ENVIRONMENT='mumbai' and run the following:
(Optional if you use different accounts for different networks) Change the private key of the Mumbai test account: PRIVATE_KEY='0xaxxx'

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network mumbai

Deploying contract with the account: 0xf6a4169C3f2a435afd78c48E6a3f99F4a174A5Df
The initial supply is: 1000000.0
Token deployed to: 0x936252d5B76b875a9AEC09ed105e4817bfB9DcEe

View deployed contact at mumbai.polygonscan.com

Import the WIT token in MetaMask using the token contract address:

You can send and receive WIT now:

Polygon

Deploy on Polygon main network is essentially the same as on Mumbai. Just load some real MATIC and run:

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network ploygon

View deployed contact at polygonscan.com

Ethereum

Deploy on Ethereum mainnet with some real Ether:

npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network ethereum

Deploying contract with the account: 0xf6a4169C3f2a435afd78c48E6a3f99F4a174A5Df
The initial supply is: 1000000.0
Token deployed to: 0x1E8Aa19bA80007374181e48106DDD9c00CeC09cb

View deployed contact at etherscan.io

The real transaction cost me: $99.6 and the gas estimation right before I deployed the contract was $103.02 - pretty good.

Now, I am a self-made millionaire! :)

Load WIT token is simple:

Then, enter the contract address in the form shown below:

0x1E8Aa19bA80007374181e48106DDD9c00CeC09cb

You can also send WIT to other people, which cost me $9 -$ 12 gas fee:

Contract Verification

Related Hardhat Docs

arguments.js must be created to hold the contract constructor arguments - make sure that the arguments must match the ones you used to deploy the contract.

Then run the following with the deployed contract address:

npx hardhat verify --contract contracts/Token.sol:Token --constructor-args arguments.js --network ethereum 0x1E8Aa19bA80007374181e48106DDD9c00CeC09cb

...
Nothing to compile
Successfully submitted source code for contract
contracts/Token.sol:Token at 0x1E8Aa19bA80007374181e48106DDD9c00CeC09cb
for verification on the block explorer. Waiting for verification result...

Successfully verified contract Token on Etherscan.
https://etherscan.io/address/0x1E8Aa19bA80007374181e48106DDD9c00CeC09cb#code

Visit Etherscan.io to see the checkmark.

List Token on Uniswap

You can add the new token to a decentralized exchange (DEX) such as Uniswap for trading:

Create a liquidity pool
Approve the pool (cost: ~$7):
Add liquidity - the gas fee for this step is ridiculously high (~$800), which seems to be the case for a new liquidity pool - I did not proceed ^-^:

To complete this step, I added some BanklessDAO tokens to the liquidity pool to see how this works.

Paid ~$7 to approve BANK token:
Add liquidity by paying ~$60 gas fee:
Now you can see your position:

PS. The image for this post is generated via Midjourney using the prompt "crypto currency in cyberspace, money making machine, cyberpunk, no human, hyperdetailed, future".

Self-Made Millionaire in 30 Minutes :)