Ethers.js in v5

One common misconception about the thirdweb SDK v5 is that it will no longer work with Ethers.js. As a matter of fact, the SDK v5 is built so that it can play well with polular web3 SDKs like viem, ethers v5 and ether v6!

Let's say you decide to upgrade to v5, and still want to stick with ethers.js, you can utilize thirdweb's ethers Adapter to achieve that!

In v5, instead of having "signer", we pivoted to Account, which is the replacement for "signer". Thanks to the thirdweb ethers adapter, you can conveniently convert between ethers's Signer and thirdweb's Account.

import { ethers5Adapter } from "thirdweb/adapters/ethers5";
import { useActiveAccount } from "thirdweb/react";
 
const account = useActiveAccount();
...
const signer = await ethers5Adapter.signer.toEthers({ client, chain, account });

Once you have the signer, you can perform different tasks using ethers.js as usual:

// Get balance
const balance = await signer.getBalance();
 
// Sign message
const signature = await signer.signMessage(message);

Similar to signer, you can retrieve the ethers provider in thirdweb v5 using the same adapter:

import { ethers5Adapter } from "thirdweb/adapters/ethers5";
import { createThirdwebClient } from "thirdweb";
 
const client = createThirdwebClient({
  clientId: "...",
});
 
const provider = ethers5Adapter.provider.toEthers({
  client,
  chainId,
});

and perform tasks with it:

const blockNumber = await provider.getBlockNumber();

Similarly to the 2 components above, here's how you can convert a thirdweb contract instance to ethers's:

import { ethers5Adapter } from "thirdweb/adapters/ethers5";
const ethersContract = await ethers5Adapter.contract.toEthers({
  thirdwebContract,
});

and then do stuff with it:

// Estimate gas
const gasLimit = await contract.estimateGas["functionName"](
  ...params,
);
 
// Send a transaction
const tx = await contract["functionName"](...params, { gasLimit });