Impersonating accounts on a forked Ethereum main net using Hardhat

Question

I used the example from the Hardhat docs to impersonate an account on a forked network:

await hre.network.provider.request({ method: "hardhat_impersonateAccount", params: ["0x...."]} )

However, I get "Error: Returned error: unknown account". How should this be done correctly? Thanks

Answer 1

try

import { network, ethers } from "hardhat";
await network.provider.request({
      method: "hardhat_impersonateAccount",
      params: ["0x..........................."],
    });

if you use hardhat-ethers

 const signer = await ethers.provider.getSigner(
      "0x..........................."
    );

Answer 2

Update Oct 2022

Impersonating Accounts with Hardhat has a new, simplified API. According to their new docs, you can impersonate an account using the getImpersonatedSigner method

const impersonatedSigner = await ethers.getImpersonatedSigner("0x1234567890123456789012345678901234567890");
await impersonatedSigner.sendTransaction(...);

Answer 3

viem solution 2024

Import

import hre from "hardhat";
import { impersonateAccount } from "@nomicfoundation/hardhat-network-helpers"

impersonate

const whaleWalletAddress = '0xbccA1f5d4dB5FB26310c38b99189C7d43586da46'
await impersonateAccount(whaleWalletAddress)
const [myUserBeingWhale] = await hre.viem.getWalletClients({account: whaleWalletAddress})

Should also works for ethers (untested)

const myUserSignerBeingWhale = await hre.ethers.getSigner(whaleWalletAddress)