Has this project improved since March?

Developers Misc Dev Talk
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In March, I posted a question asking if any tools are available for Cardano that are similar to Solidity, web3, Infura, and Metamask. I received a bunch of incorrect and conflicting information. One person claimed that they had created a dApp using Cardano, but could not provide the URL. I also received several replies trying to convince me to run a Cardano node. I do not wish to run a Cardano node.

Is there a website which describes how to perform the same functionality with Cardano, that I can currently perform with Ethereum?

With Ethereum, I use Solidity to create smart contacts, and I use web3 to interact with Infura and Metamask, which eliminates the need to run a node.

Are tools available for Cardano that are similar to Solidity, web3, Infura, and Metamask? If not, how do you expect developers to run a Cardano Dapp in the browser?

Again, I do not wish to run a Cardano node.

Thanks!

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Tools to create smart contracts that are currently available are Plutus and Marlow. More info here: https://docs.cardano.org/projects/plutus/en/latest/

Smart contract support doesn’t start until Goguen drops. I think they said it will drop August 2021. No Dapp support untill then. You can use Cardano test net to test your contracts while waiting for Goguen to drop.

However, many developers are brut forcing smart contracts and NFTs on the chain already. For that you need to be very good in Haskell.

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@Neo_Spank Thank you for your definitive reply.

Without running a Cardano node, or installing a bloated SDK, please describe how I can do the following (which I can currently do in Ethereum using web3 and infura):

  1. Use Cardano test net to test contracts that are created at Plutus.
  2. Use Javascript to programmatically send ADA.
  3. Use Javascript to programmatically confirm that ADA was received.
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  1. Plutus has contract testing built in. Just import from library provided. Read more here:
    https://alpha.marlowe.iohkdev.io/doc/plutus/tutorials/contract-testing.html

2 and 3. You can use Javascript (Typescript) directly in Marlow. Open Marlow playground, click Start Coding, select Javascript. Then click compile, then send to simulator. I don’t really use Javascript, but I think you can just use dispatchEvent() and addEventListener()
May find more answers here: https://alpha.marlowe.iohkdev.io/doc/marlowe/tutorials/javascript-embedding.html

Also, ERC20 converter will launch soon on test net to convert any native Etherium tokens into Cardano. if you are trying to migrate projects from Etherium.
Later (next year, maybe) IELE will be launched to convert almost any code into Cardano (such as JS, .NET, C++, PHP, Swift, etc…). Been in works for 3 years already.

Hope this helps :smiley: