Test Contract Deployer Allowlist

Hands-on exercise: Verify the Contract Deployer Allowlist precompile is active and manage roles.

Objectives

By the end of this exercise, you will be able to:

Verify the Contract Deployer Allowlist precompile is active on your L1
Confirm your wallet has Admin permissions for deploying contracts
Test deploying a contract using the Builder Console

Prerequisites

Before starting this exercise, ensure you have:

Completed the L1 creation with Contract Deployer Allowlist enabled at genesis
Your Docker-hosted node is running and synced
Core Wallet connected to your custom L1
Your wallet address was added as an admin in the genesis config

Instructions

Step 1: Open the Contract Deployer Allowlist tool

Connect to your custom L1 and open the Deployer Allowlist tool:

Builder Console

Checking requirements...

Expected Result: The tool should load the full UI. If you see "not available" or "not activated", the precompile was not enabled at genesis.

Step 2: Verify your Admin role

Select readAllowList
Paste your wallet address
Execute the read

Expected Result: Your role should show as Admin (value 2).

Role values: 0 = None, 1 = Enabled, 2 = Manager, 3 = Admin

Step 3: Test deploying a contract

Use the ICM Demo deployment tool to verify you can deploy contracts:

Builder Console

Checking requirements...

Click "Deploy ICMDemo"
Confirm the transaction in Core Wallet
Wait for the deployment to complete

Expected Result: The contract deploys successfully and you receive a contract address.

Step 4: Test granting deploy permissions

As an Admin, you can authorize other addresses to deploy contracts:

Go back to the Deployer Allowlist tool
Select setEnabled
Enter a test address
Execute the transaction and confirm in Core Wallet

After the transaction confirms, use readAllowList on that address to verify it now shows Enabled.

Be careful who you grant deploy permissions to. On a production network, unauthorized contract deployments could introduce security risks.

Expected Output

The Contract Deployer Allowlist tool renders the full UI (not "not available")
Your wallet reads as Admin (role 2 or 3)
The ICMDemo contract deploys successfully
You can grant Enabled status to another address

Verification

To verify you've completed this exercise successfully:

readAllowList for your wallet returns Admin
You successfully deployed the ICMDemo contract
You successfully called setEnabled for a test address

Troubleshooting

Issue: Tool shows "not available"

Problem: The Contract Deployer Allowlist tool shows the precompile is not activated.

Solution: The precompile was not enabled at genesis. You'll need to either:

Recreate the L1 with the precompile enabled, or
Use a network upgrade to activate it (covered in a later section)

Issue: Contract deployment fails with authorization error

Problem: Deployment fails even though you believe you're an admin.

Solution:

Verify your wallet address in the genesis config matches exactly
Ensure you're connected to the correct L1 network in Core Wallet
Use readAllowList to confirm your actual role

Issue: readAllowList shows None for my wallet

Problem: Your wallet address is not recognized as an admin.

Solution: Verify the address in your genesis config's contractDeployerAllowListConfig.adminAddresses matches your connected wallet.

🎉 Part 1 Complete!

Congratulations! You've completed the Fundamentals section of this course. You now know how to:

Enable Transaction AllowList and Contract Deployer AllowList at genesis
Manage roles (Admin, Manager, Enabled) via the Builder Console
Test that your permissions are correctly configured

You can stop here if you only need to configure access restrictions for a new L1.

Continue to Advanced Topics (Optional)

The remaining sections dive deeper into precompile internals and recovery patterns:

Precompile Flow — Understand how allowlist enforcement works at the VM level
User Error — Intentionally lock yourself out and observe the failures
Network Upgrades — Learn to deactivate and reactivate precompiles via upgrade.json (requires a Docker validator)

These advanced topics are useful if you need to recover from misconfigurations or want a deeper understanding of how precompiles work under the hood.

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