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Version: nightly

Gno.land smart contracts

Ignite CLI supports gno.land smart contracts. Gno (Gnolang) is a deterministic variant of Go: smart contracts ("realms") are plain Go-like code, with package-level state persisted on-chain.

This guide walks through the full development loop.

Scaffold a realm​

A realm (gno.land/r/...) is a stateful smart contract. A package (gno.land/p/...) is a stateless library.

ignite scaffold realm counter
cd counter

This creates a gnomod.toml, a working realm with a counter, its tests, and a Render function for the gno.land web. Use a full path for nested modules:

ignite scaffold realm gno.land/r/demo/counter
ignite scaffold package utils

Start a dev chain​

ignite chain serve

This runs a local, in-memory gno.land chain:

  • the well-known dev account test1 is pre-funded (its mnemonic is printed),
  • every gno package under the current directory is deployed at genesis: a single package directory deploys that package, a gnowork.toml workspace deploys all packages under it,
  • every .gno file change reloads the chain,
  • the RPC endpoint listens on tcp://127.0.0.1:26657 (override with --remote).

The gno stdlibs are embedded in the binary; no gno installation is required.

Work with multiple packages​

A project can hold several packages: realms under r/, pure packages under p/. Add an empty gnowork.toml file at the project root so serve deploys all of them:

myproject/
├── gnowork.toml
├── counter/    # realm, gno.land/r/counter
└── strings/    # package, gno.land/p/strings
cd myproject
ignite chain serve

All packages deploy at genesis in dependency order, and saving any .gno file reloads all of them. ignite chain deploy deploys a single package to any chain, workspace or not.

Interact with the chain​

# invoke a realm function
ignite chain call gno.land/r/counter Increment

# evaluate a read-only expression
ignite chain query "gno.land/r/counter.Get()"

# send coins (by address or key name)
ignite chain send alice 10000000ugnot

Test​

Run the gno tests of your package (_test.gno files):

ignite chain test

Generate a typed TypeScript client​

Generate a typed realm client built on @gnolang/gno-js-client:

ignite generate ts-client   # writes counter.client.ts

The generated module follows the official GnoWallet.addRealm pattern: read-only functions evaluate expressions through the wallet's provider, realm functions (state-mutating) broadcast transactions with wallet.callMethod:

import { GnoWallet } from "@gnolang/gno-js-client";
import { counterRealm } from "./counter.client";

const Wallet = GnoWallet.addRealm(counterRealm);
const wallet = await Wallet.fromMnemonic(mnemonic);

await wallet.realm.increment(); // broadcast a MsgCall
const count = await wallet.realm.get(); // read-only evaluation

Deploy​

ignite chain deploy               # deploy the package in the current dir
ignite chain deploy path/to/pkg   # or point at a package directory

The module path comes from gnomod.toml. Point at any chain with --remote and sign with --from <key> (defaults to the dev account test1 on the local dev chain).

Manage accounts​

Accounts live in the gno keybase (~/.config/gno) and are shared with gnokey:

ignite account create alice
ignite account list
ignite account export alice --output alice.asc
ignite account import alice alice.asc

New accounts hold no coins; fund them from the dev account with ignite chain send.

Cosmos SDK chains​

The Cosmos SDK tooling for sovereign blockchains lives under ignite cosmos (see ignite cosmos --help).