Scaffold Stellar

Scaffold Stellar is a developer toolkit for building decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts on the Stellar blockchain. It helps you go from idea to working full-stack dApp faster — by providing CLI tools, reusable contract templates, a smart contract registry, and a modern frontend.

Visit the Scaffold Stellar homepage for guides, docs, and more.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following installed:

Tool	Description	Install Link
Rust & Cargo	For writing and compiling smart contracts	curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
Node.js & npm	For frontend development	Download from official site
Stellar CLI	For building, deploying, and interacting with smart contracts	Link for the repo

Getting Started

Installation

Install the required CLI tools:

# Install stellar-scaffold CLI
cargo install --locked stellar-scaffold-cli

# Install registry CLI (to easily deploy your contract to the registry)
cargo install --locked stellar-registry-cli

For a faster install, use cargo-binstall

Instead of building from source, you can speed up the installation by getting the binary directly using cargo-binstall. This is especially useful in CI environments.

# Install cargo-binstall (see other install methods in their README linked above)
cargo install cargo-binstall

# Install the binaries
cargo binstall stellar-scaffold-cli stellar-registry-cli

Creating a New Project

1. Initialize a new project:

stellar scaffold init my-project
cd my-project

This will create the project scaffold in the directory you specified with a few sample contracts. Or you can start from the OpenZeppelin Wizard to customize your contract and start a Scaffold Stellar project from there.

2. Start the app:

npm start

You'll have a running dApp integrated with the starter contracts, ready to start building!

Explore the environments.toml file to customize your development environment(s) that's set by your .env file.

Project Structure

When you run stellar scaffold init, it creates a full-stack project structure with example contracts and a modern frontend:

my-project/
├── contracts/          # Rust smart contracts (compiled to WASM)
├── packages/           # Auto-generated TypeScript contract clients
├── src/                # React frontend code
│   ├── components/     # Reusable UI components
│   ├── contracts/      # Contract interaction logic
│   ├── App.tsx         # Main app component
│   └── main.tsx        # Entry point
├── environments.toml   # Configuration per environment (dev/test/prod)
├── .env                # Local environment variables
├── package.json        # Frontend packages
└── target/             # Build outputs

This template provides a ready-to-use frontend application with example smart contracts and their TypeScript clients. The frontend is set up with Vite, React, and includes basic components for interacting with the contracts.

Features

• CLI Plugins for Stellar

  • stellar scaffold init: Initialize new Stellar smart contract projects
  • stellar scaffold upgrade: Transform existing Stellar contract workspaces into Scaffold projects
  • stellar scaffold build: Build contracts and generate TypeScript clients
  • stellar scaffold watch: Development mode with hot reloading
  • stellar registry: Publish, deploy, and manage smart contracts

• Environment Management

  • Environment-specific builds (development, testing, staging, production)
  • Seamless integration with both local and deployed contracts
  • Network configuration via environments.toml
  • Support for multiple deployment environments

• Smart Contract Registry

  • On-chain publishing platform for Wasm binaries
  • Version management and contract naming
  • Contract verification and dependency management
  • Secure deployment workflow for testnet and mainnet

More Resources

For more information, check out the project on GitHub!