Cradle
Cradle is an easy-to-use tool for forking a dedicated testnet from any Mesa-supported network.
Leveraging archival capabilities of Mesa, Cradle is able to fork a running network at any point in time. The forked network is a dedicated, isolated network, fully replicating the original network at the time of the fork.
Cradle is designed to be a full-chain simulator, allowing you to send transactions on behalf of anyone, and to simulate the entire chain state. It even retains the original validator set (unlike other forking solutions), and lets you select the proposer.
Features
Zero-Configuration fork
No downloads, installations, configurations, or setups required.
It's as simple as specifying the network and fork height you desire.
Everything else happens in the cloud, giving you instant access to your forked network within seconds.
30 Seconds to Ready
It takes mere 30 seconds to fork a network, and you can start using it immediately. We've even included a mini explorer/dashboard for you to monitor your fork's progress.
Send Transactions on Behalf of Anyone
Cradle offers a unique capability - it bypasses signature verification, allowing you to send transactions on behalf of anyone. This opens the door to a wide range of simulations, from transferring tokens from a whale account to migrating a contract to V2.
Keep the Tools You Love
Each Cradle session is served over the same RPC interface (with a bit more to control the fork itself). There's no need to learn a new tool, and porting your existing toolchain is almost as easy as changing the RPC endpoint.
Why Fork? We Have Testnet!
We rely on testnets to test our code against a network that closely mimics the mainnet before deployment. Testnets serve as controlled sandboxes that simulate mainnet behavior.
Sadly, testnets are not "sound" enough to make them an ideal sandbox environment for development.
- Testnet states are not realistic. Not enough interaction on the testnet to simulate live data. The market situation can be far from ideal, and often chaotic.
- Testnet access is unreliablee. The absence of incentives for testnet maintenance leads to unreliable access. Chains halting happens more often than you think on testnets!
- Testnet parameters are different. Testnets may have varying parameters compared to the mainnet. Differences in contract parameters, block intervals, gas values, and other crucial settings can further complicate testing and deviate from the mainnet's actual behavior.
Developing Web3 products must be taken seriously, due to their inherent value-bearing nature. Therefore, testing products against an environment that is designed to be value-aligned is crucial. This becomes more evident when developing products that are heavily market-dependent (DeFi) - what good is testing if it doesn’t accurately reflect the actual market? How can you ensure your product is robust and prepared for any conceivable market scenario?
There are alternative solutions that lets you create local forks from a clean state. However, it then becomes your responsibility to simulate and populate proper states of the protocol you depend on. This is often quite challenging, sometimes requiring more effort than the actual testing itself.
All these problems negatively impact your productivity, and ultimately, the safety of your product. Dealing with intricacies of a product you don't own is a distraction from your core business — and oftentimes, the solutions are out of your reach, or overly complicated. At this point, testnet only provides a code-wise compatibility to mainnet, but nothing more.
That being said, testing on mainnet is perhaps the only way to ensure your product is ready for the real world. Up until now, this was a very expensive and difficult process — not to mention that testing requires actual money.
Rendering testnet obsolete
Cradle is designed to tackle these problems directly. Forked networks on Cradle are not only the correct forks of mainnet, but also gives you nice extra features that ensures high fidelity in your testing. Anything is possible — from migrating your protocol to V2 while ensuring the safety of your users, to simulating a whale account moving millions of dollars and dump on your protocol and see how it reacts.
We know you will love Cradle, because we did too. Welcome to the era of testnet obsolescence.