Introducing ZepKit: the easiest way to start your (d)app - OpenZeppelin blog

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by Ramon Recuero

For the last few years, OpenZeppelin has been the standard for smart contract development. OpenZeppelin is a battle-tested framework of reusable smart contracts for Ethereum that has powered more than $4.5 billion worth of digital assets. A few months ago, we started ZeppelinOS to help not only with Solidity needs but with all the components of the development journey. Today, we are announcing the release of ZepKit to help you with the first step of a project: setting it up.

This new ZeppelinOS product is a starter kit to bootstrap your decentralized application. Unlike other alternatives, it includes an interactive tutorial (which can be easily removed) to help you take your first steps in the world of smart contract development.
ZepKit includes other popular tools such as Truffle, OpenZeppelin, React, and Infura to speed up your setup and development. By bringing together the layers you need to create a decentralized application–and thus allowing you to focus on your business logic–you can use the capabilities of each technology together in a single application, without having to spend hours figuring out which tools to choose and how to integrate them.

ZeppelinOS + Infura

ZeppelinOS and Infura share aligned visions. ZeppelinOS is a development platform designed specifically for smart contract projects. Infura’s focus is to provide a secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure for your decentralized applications.ZeppelinOS comes already preconfigured with an Infura API key that allows you to interact with different Ethereum test networks as well as mainnet. You can use this API key for all your development needs. When you’re ready to go to production, head to Infura and replace it with your own API key.

How ZepKit Works

ZepKit works by creating a React application that serves a web user interface. This interface allows you to interact with your smart contracts via a web3 provider: Metamask, Coinbase Wallet. The interaction is enabled by Truffle and ZeppelinOS. They work together to compile and test your smart contracts locally. Eventually, you need to take your application to mainnet, and Infura is already configured to help you do so effortlessly.

ZepKit allows developers to:

• Upgrade smart contracts. Fix bugs and security vulnerabilities, and introduce new features to your projects without migrating all your data.
• Reuse on-chain code. Reuse on-chain Solidity code that has been vetted by the community. Link to on-chain smart contract packages (EVM packages) as building blocks for your project, and publish your packages for others to use. OpenZeppelin is included in the example.
• Easily connect with Ethereum networks via preconfigured Infura API keys. Use Infura to connect and access data from different test-nets and mainnet of Ethereum. They provide an easy-to-use API and developer tools to enable secure, reliable, and scalable access to Ethereum and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System).
• Compile and test smart contracts. ZepKit includes the Truffle suite that contains a development environment, testing framework, and asset pipeline for blockchains using the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
• Create adaptable and responsive UI components. ZepKit includes React – create-react-app – and Rimble to give you all the components and flexibility you need to build responsive user interfaces.

Getting Started

If you’re interested in ZepKit, you can use it today! Check out the step-by-step guide!