What are the drawbacks of using a Testnet to deploy a smart contract when I am not worried about security or decentralisation?

Question

I am looking to create a basic ERC 20 token and share it with some people at Christmas time to represent a share of ownership in a dog. I am not concerned about security as this is not going to be publicly traded and is more for educational purposes than anything.

Gas fees are so High that its not feasible to deploy to the mainnet for this POC but I do want the experience to be as real as possible and straightforward for the users who are not Crypto Kids. I plan on using Metamask and a testnet to deploy the token which will only be shared with a few people.

Is there any specific drawback to this approach such as the chain being incomplete or the token not lasting beyond a certain date? I need it to last till next February and be available in Metamask as a simple select option.

Answer 1

Hope the following gives you a good over.

Advantages

• Testnet node needs to sync and store much less data
• Testnet node can sync in a couple of hours
• Deploying contracts can be done using "test Ether" which is free
• Testnets are public blockchains and contain many other users and contract that run live, making it pretty realistics

Disadvantages

• Real money cannot be used, thus making it much less attractive to potential adversaries to exploit your contracts
• Some aspects of a public blockchain miss to be realistic. E.g. transaction fees, although its necessary to send transactions they are not considered on testnet, since gas is free. Furthermore there is nothing like congestion as it might occur on mainnet.

(cf. Antonoupolos and Wood 2018)