[PROPOSAL] Hardhat Cross-Chain Simulator Plugin

[DappsoverApps]

HI @flowmodule, Thank you so much for taking time to review our proposal. Below are the answers to your question.

1. Evidence of developer need:

@DappsoverApps

There’s clear, documented demand for this plugin from developers facing hard limitations today.

• Tilt is too heavy – Wormhole’s official dev‑environment spins up every chain in Kubernetes and “usually takes 30 minutes to spin up fully,” with multi‑CPU/GB requirements that break local laptops and free CI runners Wormhole.
• Manual CLI testing is brittle – missed parameters in worm generate / worm submit produce “Requested VAA not found in store” errors, as seen in public GitHub discussions GitHub.
• No simulator for Hardhat – Pigeon, the only cross‑chain test toolkit, states it is “designed to work with the Foundry testing framework,” leaving JavaScript workflows uncovered GitHub.

2. Long-term Sustainability:
   After the initial six‑month maintenance window, our team will keep the plugin maintained as open source. We expect meaningful adoption because it addresses a clear gap for a large share of Wormhole developers who use JavaScript/Hardhat, and we’ll track that with concrete KPIs (npm downloads, CI integrations, external PRs).

Sustainability plan:

1. Our team provides core maintenance (SDK/CLI compatibility, bug fixes) beyond the buffer.
2. Once the plugin is in use, we will approach the Wormhole Foundation to propose adding it to their recommended tooling.
3. We will structure the repo for community contribution (CONTRIBUTING.md, CODEOWNERS, issue labels, maintainer rotation) so upkeep doesn’t depend on a single team.

Future DAO requests, if any, would most likely be for feature expansions and not to keep the MVP running. The goal is to minimize long‑term grant dependence while ensuring the tool remains reliable.

We hope this makes sense. Kindly let us know if you have any more questions or concerns. Happy to clarify.