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Katana Development Starter Kit

This tutorial will help you set up and use the Katana Development Starter Kit for building applications on Katana and its testnets, Tatara and Bokuto.

Note: Tatara will eventually be deprecated. It is recommended to use Bokuto as the testnet, or to use a local fork of Katana’s mainnet, as will be described in the content below.

What is Katana?

Katana is a chain focused on providing optimized infrastructure for DeFi applications with integrated “money legos” - composable financial building blocks that developers can use to create new financial applications. It is focused on creating an experience where applications building on it can tap into deeper liquidity and offer higher yields than is available on any other chain.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following tools installed:

  • Bun - A fast JavaScript runtime and package manager
  • Foundry - A toolkit for Ethereum application development
  • Git - Version control

Setting Up Your Project

  1. Clone the repository and navigate to it:

    git clone https://github.com/katana-network/specialk
cd specialk

  2. Create an environment file by copying the example:

    cp .env.example .env

  3. Edit .env to add your RPC endpoints, if desired:

  4. Install dependencies:

    bun install

Running a Local Fork

To develop locally without spending testnet tokens, you can run a local fork of the testnets or the mainnet. This will make a local copy of the chain in a few seconds, running the real state but also providing you with infinite Eth on any of the open test-addresses provided by Foundry’s Anvil.

This is the recommended approach to develop on Katana - it keeps state local and prevents RPC rate limits, while letting you play with the real state of Katana’s live mainnet.

Step 1: Start Anvil Fork (Terminal 1)

bun run start:anvil katana

Anvil Start

Step 2: Verify the Fork (Terminal 2)

bun run verify:anvil

Anvil Start

Connecting to the Fork

You can now connect your wallet to your local fork:

  • Network Name: Katana Local Fork
  • RPC URL: http://localhost:8545
  • Chain ID: 747474
  • Currency Symbol: ETH

Opening the Example App

Build the example app with:

bun run build:all

Going forward, you can just run bun run build to rebuild only the app, but the first build:all run will build the ABIs, the MCP server, and more utilities to bootstrap your environment.

This will:

  • Compile your TypeScript code into dist
  • Copy static assets like HTML, CSS, and images

Then, make sure your local fork is running (Terminal 1) and serve the compiled web app with any server, e.g.:

bun run dev

Demo app running in terminal Demo app running in browser

Exploring the Interfaces

One of the key features of this starter kit is the comprehensive set of interfaces for Katana’s “money legos.” Browse the contracts directory to see what’s available.

Alternatively, for a more readable UI, you can use the Katana Contract Directory UI.

Next Steps

Now that you have a working development environment, you can:

  1. Explore the example App code to understand how it interacts with Katana
  2. Review the contracts folder to understand available interfaces and ABIs
  3. Start building your own application using the “money legos”

For more tutorials, examples, and inspiration, please see the awesome-katana repo.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues:

  • Check that port 8545 isn’t already in use by another application
  • Ensure Foundry is properly installed and anvil is in your PATH
  • If the script isn’t executable, run chmod +x scripts/start_anvil.sh
  • If all else fails, let us know in the starter kit issues!

Happy building on Katana! 🚀