To get the most out of this book

For writing smart contracts, you need Vyper 0.3.10. All code examples will not work with Vyper 0.4. So, you need to install a specific version of Vyper, which is not the latest version of Vyper. However, please see adjustments in the GitHub repository if you want to use Vyper 0.4. Other than Vyper, please use the latest version of software / libraries. If there are incompatibilities, please see the GitHub repository. The code has been tested on Ubuntu Linux and MacOS. It’s not been tested on Windows, but it should work on Windows. The installation procedures of software on Windows are not covered in the book. But please see the GitHub repository for additional help.

Software/hardware covered in the book

Python (minimum version 3.10 required), Vyper 0.3.10 (versions 0.4.x and above will not work), Ape Framework 0.7.23 (versions 0.8.x and above will not work), modern browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, etc), Remix, Ganache, Hardhat, Geth, Web3.py, PySide 6, Kubo, aioipfs, Alchemy, Infura, Django, FastAPI, Node.js, Pnpm, React, Wagmi, MetaMask

Operating system requirements: Windows, macOS, or Linux

All software is free to use. For SaaS like Infura or Alchemy, you can use the free tier.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

If you want to deploy smart contracts to production blockchains, such as Ethereum mainnet, then you need to buy or acquire ETH which costs real money!