This article applies to:

• Ethereum
• Polygon
• BNB Smart Chain
• Avalanche
• Fantom
• Harmony

Introduction

Ganache CLI can fork an EVM network and run a local simulated EVM node based on EthereumJS.

This can be especially useful if you want to interact with the complex decentralized finance (DeFi) contracts deployed on the mainnet in a local simulated environment.

You need an archive node to fork a mainnet.

Step-by-step

Deploy an archive node with Chainstack

Deploy an archive node as described in Join a public network.

Get the RPC endpoint and access credentials of your deployed node as described in View node access and credentials. 

Install Ganache CLI

Run:

npm install -g ganache-cli

Fork the mainnet through the Chainstack node at the latest block

Run:

ganache-cli --fork HTTPS_ENDPOINT

where HTTPS_ENDPOINT is your node HTTPS endpoint.

Example:

ganache-cli --fork https://nd-123-456-789.p2pify.com/3c6e0b8a9c15224a8228b9a98ca1531

A forked mainnet node is now running locally and you can interact with it.

Fork the mainnet through the Chainstack node at a specific block

Run:

ganache-cli --fork HTTPS_ENDPOINT@BLOCK_NUMBER

where

• HTTPS_ENDPOINT — your node HTTPS endpoint.
• BLOCK_NUMBER — the block number at which you want to fork.

Example:

ganache-cli --fork https://nd-123-456-789.p2pify.com/3c6e0b8a9c15224a8228b9a98ca1531@8116664

A forked mainnet node is now running locally and you can interact with it.

See also:

• Ganache CLI Readme
• Using MetaMask with a remote Ganache CLI node
• Ganache CLI fails with "Error: callback already called"