Chris Hitchcott (Digix Core Dev)

Why was Sigmate created?

Sigmate was created to easily test multiple account types at Digix such as Admins, Regular Users, Custodians, Auditors, Suppliers just to name a few. Sigmate is thus used for managing Ethereum accounts using eth-lightwallet (for testing users with different roles in the system)

A tool to simplify running tests with multiple Ethereum Accounts

Writing a test suite is great with TestRPC, but it gets trickier when trying to run the same suite against different chains, with potentially different accounts and balances.

Sigmate simplifies testing Ethereum contracts by using a local keystore to sign transactions. It’s essentially a lightwallet specifically for testing within multiple different environments.

When you initialise Sigmate, you pass it some unique account names. These accounts will be automatically funded with Ether from the chain’s default account, and web3 will be hooked to use these accounts instead of the default chain accounts.

Sigmate is environment-agnostic, but will share keys across multiple chains. Ensure you initialise Sigmate with the correct balances for the chain you are working on.