frontend-playbook
Frontend Playbook
What You Probably Got Wrong
"I'll use yarn chain." Wrong. yarn chain gives you an empty local chain with no protocols, no tokens, no state. yarn fork --network base gives you a copy of real Base with Uniswap, Aave, USDC, real whale balances — everything. Always fork.
"I deployed to IPFS and it works." Did the CID change? If not, you deployed stale output. Did routes work? Without trailingSlash: true, every route except / returns 404. Did you check the OG image? Without NEXT_PUBLIC_PRODUCTION_URL, it points to localhost:3000.
"I'll set up the project manually." Don't. npx create-eth@latest handles everything — Foundry, Next.js, RainbowKit, scaffold hooks. Never run forge init or create Next.js projects from scratch.
Fork Mode Setup
Why Fork, Not Chain
More from austintgriffith/ethskills
ethskills
Use when a request involves Ethereum, the EVM, or blockchain systems. Applies to building, auditing, deploying, or interacting with smart contracts, dApps, wallets, or DeFi protocols. Covers Solidity development, contract addresses, token standards (ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-4626, etc.), Layer 2 networks (Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Polygon), and integrations with DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, Aave, and Curve. Includes topics such as gas costs, contract decimals, oracle safety, reentrancy, MEV, bridging, wallets, querying data from onchain, production deployment, and protocol evolution (EIP lifecycle, fork tracking, upcoming changes).
1.2Kindexing
How to read and query onchain data — events, The Graph, indexing patterns. Why you cannot just loop through blocks, and what to use instead.
38building-blocks
DeFi legos and protocol composability on Ethereum and L2s. Major protocols per chain — Aerodrome on Base, GMX/Pendle on Arbitrum, Velodrome on Optimism — plus mainnet primitives (Uniswap, Aave, Compound, Curve). How they work, how to build on them, and how to combine them. Use when building DeFi integrations, choosing protocols on a specific L2, designing yield strategies, or composing existing protocols into something new.
38standards
Ethereum token and protocol standards — ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, ERC-4337, ERC-8004, and newer standards. When to use each, how they work, key interfaces. Use when building tokens, NFTs, or choosing the right standard for a project.
37gas
Current Ethereum gas prices, transaction costs, and the real economics of building on Ethereum today. Use when estimating costs, choosing between mainnet and L2s, or when a user asks about Ethereum being expensive. Counters the #1 misconception that Ethereum is expensive to use.
36l2s
Ethereum Layer 2 landscape — Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, Scroll, Unichain, Celo, and more. How they work, how to deploy on them, how to bridge, when to use which. Includes per-chain DeFi ecosystems and critical corrections. Use when choosing an L2, deploying cross-chain, or when a user asks about Ethereum scaling.
36