Madara Quick Start Guide

Extropy.IO
6 min readJul 8, 2024

Welcome to this Madara Quick Start Guide! This guide will walk you through the quickest and easiest way we’ve been able to get a Madara node up and running and then deploy contracts locally. Let’s get started!

Required Software

Please make sure that you have the following installed

  • rust
  • asdf
  • starkli 0.1.20 this page also shows you how to install via asdf to manage different versions
  • scarb also recommended install with asdf
  • node v.20.5.1 (can manage with either asdf or nvm)

Linux users may need to add these dependencies build-essential, libclang1,clang1,protobuf-compiler

Repos

You’ll clone these 2 repos

Clone the Madara Repo

First thing is to clone the repo.

git clone git@github.com:keep-starknet-strange/madara.git

Starting Madara

Once cloned, from inside the madara folder of this newly cloned repo run the following command. Replace the /User/desmo/madara-state with the location where you want to store your Madara state: /home/user/directory

Note

These commands are different than the commands given in the Madara repo and allow us to save the node’s state locally.

cargo run --release -- setup --from-local ./configs/ --chain=dev --base-path=/Users/desmo/madara-state
cargo run --release -- --alice --base-path /Users/desmo/madara-state --rpc-cors=all --chain=dev

This starts the chain and is pointing to the location of where we stored the state you should replace the file path with what you used in the previous command.

If successful you should get an output similar to this:

Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 1.80s
Running `target/release/madara --alice --base-path /Users/desmo/madara-state --rpc-cors=all --chain=dev`
2024-03-06 17:54:44 Madara initialized w/o DA layer
2024-03-06 17:54:44 Madara initialized w/o settlement layer
2024-03-06 17:54:44 Madara Node
2024-03-06 17:54:44 ✌️ version 0.7.0-5e68494fe9d
2024-03-06 17:54:44 ❤️ by Abdelhamid Bakhta <@keep-starknet-strange>:Substrate DevHub <https://github.com/substrate-developer-hub>, 2017-2024
2024-03-06 17:54:44 📋 Chain specification: Development
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🏷 Node name: Alice
2024-03-06 17:54:44 👤 Role: AUTHORITY
2024-03-06 17:54:44 💾 Database: RocksDb at /Users/desmo/madara-state/chains/dev/db/full
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🧪 Using the following development accounts:
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🧪 NO VALIDATE with address: 0x1 and no pk
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🧪 ARGENT with address: 0x2 and pk: 0xc1cf1490de1352865301bb8705143f3ef938f97fdf892f1090dcb5ac7bcd1d
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🧪 OZ with address: 0x3 and pk: 0xc1cf1490de1352865301bb8705143f3ef938f97fdf892f1090dcb5ac7bcd1d
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🧪 CAIRO 1 with address: 0x4 and no pk
2024-03-06 17:54:44 Using default protocol ID "sup" because none is configured in the chain specs
2024-03-06 17:54:44 🏷 Local node identity is: 12D3KooWLngNFrmtGSXsdWV8RG1aKbNs7dHrt8NfBmt9TCtHc4CY

Creating our Contract

Now that we’ve successfully launched our node we’ll build a contract, it can be any contract but let’s start with a simple contract from the Starknet by Example a counter-contract in which we’ll make some simple modifications.

Scarb Commands

Let’s start by creating our project using scarb

scarb new counter_contract

then go into your counter_contract and open your newly created project with your favorite editor.

Modifying scarb.toml

We need to add a couple of lines to our toml file to make it compatible with our Madara node.

[package]
name = "counter_contract"
version = "0.1.0"
# See more keys and their definitions at https://docs.swmansion.com/scarb/docs/reference/manifest.html
[dependencies]
starknet = ">=2.1.0"
[[target.starknet-contract]]
casm = true

Modifying lib.rs

If you’re running your own hello_world (or different) contract you don't have to do this but if you're following along we need to modify the counter contract by removing and adding small parts of code.

#[starknet::interface]
// remove pub modifier
trait ISimpleCounter<TContractState> {
fn get_current_count(self: @TContractState) -> u128;
fn increment(ref self: TContractState);
fn decrement(ref self: TContractState);
}
#[starknet::contract]
// remove pub modifier
mod SimpleCounter {
#[storage]
struct Storage {
// Counter variable
counter: u128,
}
#[constructor]
// remove the `init_valule` parameter
fn constructor(ref self: ContractState) {
// Store initial value
self.counter.write(1); // add `1` here
}

// this macro is important to make sure tha we can access
// these functions externally
#[external(v0)]
impl SimpleCounter of super::ISimpleCounter<ContractState> {
fn get_current_count(self: @ContractState) -> u128 {
return self.counter.read();
}
fn increment(ref self: ContractState) {
// Store counter value + 1
let counter = self.counter.read() + 1;
self.counter.write(counter);
}
fn decrement(ref self: ContractState) {
// Store counter value - 1
let counter = self.counter.read() - 1;
self.counter.write(counter);
}
}
}

In the comments in the code you can see the modifications we’ve made, but to make it explicit we’ve:

  1. Removed the pub modifier in the trait ISimpleCounter and mod SimpleCounter
  2. Removed the init_value parameter from the fn constructor() and in self.counter.write()
  3. Changed the macro above the impl SimpleCounter to #[external(v0)

Building our lib.rs

Once the contract is ready you can simply build the contract using

scarb build

If all goes well you should have 3 new files in your newly generated target/dev folder

counter_contract.starknet_artifacts.json   
counter_contract_SimpleCounter.sierra.json #ABI file
counter_contract_SimpleCounter.casm.json

With these contracts exported we can move on to the next steps which are declaring and deploying and for this we need the Karnot: Madara get Started repo.

Setting up Karnot/madara-get-started

We start by cloning the repo, you probably want to do this outside of your madara node directory

git clone git@github.com:karnotxyz/madara-get-started.git

and

npm i

Note

You should to be running Node v20.5.1 — so make sure you’re running that version before running the Node commands by using either asdf or nvm

Cleaning the Contracts Folder

In the madara-get-started/contracts folder you have some pre-built contracts

➜  madara-get-started git:(main) ls ./contracts/*
./contracts/ERC20.json ./contracts/OpenZeppelinAccountCairoOne.sierra.json
./contracts/OpenZeppelinAccountCairoOne.casm.json

remove the contracts from your contracts folder

rm ./contracts/*

Now you need to go back to your counter_contract project and get get the contracts you built in the target/dev folder and put these contracts:

counter_contract.starknet_artifacts.json   
counter_contract_SimpleCounter.sierra.json
counter_contract_SimpleCounter.casm.json

into the madara-get-started/contracts folder

Making Changes to Madara

Before we try and declare and deploy let’s make sure we have our environment variables set by running on your terminal:

export STARKNET_RPC="http://localhost:9944/"

You can also set-up a more permanent solution but for now this works. Confirm that all is correct by running

echo $STARKNET_RPC

You should get the http://localhost:9944/ back.

Changing the ChainId

Now that we’ve confirmed that we’re set the correct STARNKET_RPC we need to go into our madera directory and open up the pallets.rs file which can be found at madara/crates/runtime/src/pallets.rs

Here we’re going to change the SN_GOERLI_CHAIN_ID to MADARA_CHAIN_ID you can search, but I found them on line 13 and line 164

// line 13
pub use mp_chain_id::MADARA_CHAIN_ID;
...
per = MADARA_CHAIN_ID;

Save this file and close it now we’re ready to re-launch the node

Go ahead and stop your previous Madara node using ctrl+C and from inside of your madarafolder run the same command we ran earlier to start the node:

cargo run --release -- --alice --base-path /Users/desmo/madara-state --rpc-cors=all --chain=dev

It should pick up from where your node left off but now with the correct chain ID.

Declaring and Deploying the Contracts

Now we need to go back to your madara-get-started folder and and run the scripts with node. Remember to be on the correct version of v.20.5.1 and run:

node scripts/declare.js ./contracts/counter_contract_SimpleCounter.sierra.json ./contracts/counter_contract_SimpleCounter.casm.json

the .seirra.json and .casm.json files should be the name of your contract name, if you're following along using the counter_contract example it should be the same as above and you should be able to run the scripts just the same, but if for whatever reason they're in a different location you can use the command with the correct locations.

node scripts/declare.js <path_to_sierra> <path_to_casm>

If that works you should see something like this:

This is the declare result -  {
transaction_hash: '0x4d9495073404c0ed2fd42bec07fc5c91d32005fedc20702d6f90612a69d78ce',
class_hash: '0x5c9b0add4b036cef0eef4fa593f29da8554c162186be99c563c3ef10d31628d'
}

With that is done we should be able to deploy the contract with

node scripts/deploy.js ./contracts/counter_contract_SimpleCounter.sierra.json

If successful we should see something like this:

This is the deploy result -  {
transaction_hash: '0x46803b2cb6d9b20902a04f6f23db165846e90a6f6096a5435198773c78912a2',
contract_address: [
'0x18a91f3352b686058894699654e470dfa65f20da5bc08317fb1a6aa3faaee78'
]
}

Contract Interaction

Now, we should be able to interact with our contract using starkli,

starkli call 0x18a91f3352b686058894699654e470dfa65f20da5bc08317fb1a6aa3faaee78 get_current_count

and that should output

[
"0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001"
]

This shows our “counter” working as we have 1 as our output which is the 1 we passed through on the initial value

fn constructor(ref self: ContractState) {
// Store initial value
self.counter.write(1); // add `1` here
}

Now all you have to do is deploy some more sophisticated contracts.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve successfully set up a Madara node, created and deployed a simple contract, and interacted with it. This guide should have provided you with a solid foundation to start working with Madara and Starknet. Happy coding!

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Extropy.IO

Oxford-based blockchain and zero knowledge consultancy and auditing firm