Build on SUBFROST

SUBFROST is built on Alkanes, a smart-contract metaprotocol that runs on Bitcoin (see Alkanes Metaprotocol). If you can write a contract or a web app, you can build on it: tokens, AMMs, vaults, and anything that reads or moves Bitcoin-backed value like frBTC.

This section is the developer track. It gets you from an empty machine to a deployed contract and a working integration.

The toolchain

You will use a small set of tools, all of them public:

• alkanes-cli for wallets, deployment, and calling contracts from the command line. It is built from source (see Quickstart).
• @alkanes/ts-sdk for talking to the chain from TypeScript, in a web app or a backend.
• A hosted JSON-RPC endpoint, so you do not have to run your own indexer to get started. Requests go to https://mainnet.subfrost.io/v4/jsonrpc (see the JSON-RPC Overview for the full method catalog). If you want to run the indexer yourself, see Indexing with metashrew.

The full command and SDK reference lives in API & SDK Docs. This track is the guided path; that section is the lookup table.

What is here

• Quickstart: install the toolchain and deploy your first contract.
• Interacting via the CLI: wallets, balances, executing and querying contracts.
• Wrapping frBTC: wrap and unwrap Bitcoin-backed frBTC from the CLI and the SDK.
• BRC2.0 Integration: deploying EVM-style contracts on Bitcoin.
• Connecting a wallet: the injected provider and remote signing for web apps.
• Indexing with metashrew: run the indexer and query chain state yourself.

Before you start

Alkanes uses a fresh wallet model. Do not reuse a wallet that holds ordinals or inscriptions for contract work: use a dedicated Alkanes wallet, as covered in Safety. On testnet and regtest this does not matter, but the habit is worth building early.

Where to go next

• Quickstart: deploy your first contract.
• Alkanes Metaprotocol: the model your contracts run on.