How to deploy all my contracts from same address (without writing .connect() a bunch of times)?

Question

I have a mnemonic in my .env.

I added it to my hardhat.config.js as such:

accounts: {
    mnemonic: process.env.MNEMONIC,
    path: "m/44'/60'/0'/0",
    initialIndex: 0,
    count: 20,
    passphrase: "",
}

However, all my contracts are still being deployed by the 1st signer in getSigners().

Questions:

1. How do I deploy all my contracts from the 1st address generated by my mnemonic (without having to write .connect() for each ContractFactory)? Essentially, how do I change the default signer?
2. How do I get multiple signers from my one mnemonic?

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways to change the default deployer.

• Changing the starting index

You can change the default by increasing the initialIndex in the accounts section of the configuration file.

accounts: {
  mnemonic: process.env.MNEMONIC,
  path: "m/44'/60'/0'/0",
  initialIndex: 1,           // <---- start with index 1
  count: 20,
  passphrase: "",
}

• Configure the signer when getting the contract factory

The getContractFactory accepts a signer as second parameter.

const [firstAccount, secondAccount, thirdAccount] = await ethers.getSigners();

const Lock = await ethers.getContractFactory("Lock", thirdAccount);