gm and welcome! This page is a one-stop-shop for all resources and content about Kurtosis and how its used in the web3 community. Feel free to get in touch with us on Discord or via Telegram directly with me, @leederek!

🆕 Introduction

Kurtosis is an open-source build system for multi-container environments.

Okay, thats cool, but what does that actually mean? Well, think: your protocol (or dApp or bridge) in-a-box for all your development and testing needs.

Sound interesting? Read on!

There are two moving pieces that folks will interact with:

1. A Python-based scripting language (Starlark) used for: defining the set up of your blockchain, nodes, or dApp, and
2. A runtime for bootstrapping and starting your system, running it locally or in the cloud, and then (optionally) letting you tear it all down once you’re done with it.

To use Kurtosis, all you need to bring are the container images for your services, the Kurtosis CLI itself, and Docker. Kurtosis is open source and works on Linux, Windows, and MacOS and is backend agnostic, meaning it will work the same way on your local machine over Docker, or in the cloud on an EC2 instance or on Kubernetes.

💻 Use Cases

• Web3 Developer Ecosystem Tooling: Kurtosis for Ecosystem Devs: Local and Private Testnets.
• Web3 Cross-Chain Protocol Teams: Kurtosis for Protocol Teams: Cross-Chain Protocol Testing
• Web3 L1 Protocol Teams: Kurtosis for Protocol Teams: End-To-End Testing Environments

💫 Value Proposition

Kurtosis is useful for as wide range of builders in the web3 space because Kurtosis gracefully handles dynamic dependency passing (e.g. genesis files, node configurations) and the careful sequencing of set up logic that complex systems like blockchains often require to set up. Existing tools like Ansible Playbooks, Docker Compose, or even Helm alone are not well suited for this task.

• Kurtosis has a definition language for configuring a multi-container test environment.
• Kurtosis has a validator for making sure test definitions work, before they run.