How to Migrate Your Smart Contracts to a New Blockchain Platform

Smart contract migration is what it takes to transfer or upgrade your existing smart contract to a new blockchain platform. Central to many blockchain applications are smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. As your business, developer, or organization expands, you may need enhanced security needs — or you may find that an increase in the number of transactions that have to occur is constraining your existing blockchain infrastructure with high fees or difficulty supporting wide-scale growth. For such cases, migrating smart contracts to another blockchain better suited for them can bring much benefit.

If you need to migrate your smart contracts to a new blockchain, why? One of the most common reasons would be a desire to scale better, to lower costs, or to simply tap in on the latest features offered by a newer blockchain platform. Also, as blockchain technology progresses, businesses may want to use platforms capable of supporting better functionality and security to keep their operations on top for both profit and efficiency.

In the following article, you will find the crucial steps of smart contract migration from planning and code adaptation to deployment and optimization. We will also talk about the best practices to keep in mind when it comes to making it easy, best practices during the migration process, and what to do to ensure you don’t run into some of the common challenges, such as compatibility issues and security concerns that you may run into during that process as well. By the end, you’ll have a roadmap to guide your blockchain migration journey.

Understanding Smart Contract Migration

‍What is Smart Contract Migration?

Smart contract migration is the task of swapping or upgradation of the smart contract from one blockchain platform to another. To automate processes across decentralized applications, smart contracts (self-executing contracts where the terms of the agreement between the buyer and the seller are directly written into lines of code) are of main significance. Since blockchain technology is constantly evolving, newer platforms keep churning out with better features and capabilities, and accordingly businesses and developers often have to migrate their smart contracts onto newer ecosystems to ensure optimal performance and take advantage of newer features.

It’s not a simple copying and pasting of code. After careful planning, the code has to be modified and suitable testing should be done in order to make the smart contracts work with the new blockchain environment. The migration of smart contracts also includes not only the code, but the associated data, and transaction history. This is important because it enables businesses to ride on upward-advancing blockchain infrastructures without compromising the integrity and usability of their contracts.

Migrating smart contracts is one of the most strategic decisions to future-proof your blockchain operation. That guarantees that their decentralized applications remain running as fast and securely and in accordance with last technological standards that favor their growth over the long term.

Why Migrate to a New Blockchain?

A smart contract migration to a new blockchain can be performed by a business or developer for many reasons. One of the major elements is scalability. As decentralized applications proliferate into use, more need for computing power and transaction speed follows. Migration to a more scalable blockchain platform may make sure that smart contracts can accommodate much greater transaction volume without losing performance. For example, you can see Ethereum and other platforms with congestion, and the only way to get away from it is to look at Polygon and pay for that transaction with a Polygon token or look at Binance Smart Chain, and have another layer on top of that.

Another great incentive for migration is obtained from transaction fees. Gas fees on most blockchain networks are paid for smart contracts to be executed and over time can be expensive, or even more expensive depending on the network’s activity at any given time. By migrating applications to the blockchain with low fees businesses are cutting down the overall cost of operation and increasing their application's efficiency.

A decision also to migrate relies, in part, on security enhancements. Blockchain security standards are not static but change as the technology for blockchain changes. The newer blockchains employ additional security protocols, that make them more secure and vulnerable to attack compared to older blockchains. Smart contracts can be moved to a platform with more fortifications against contravention of ever changing regulations, and shielding sensitive data.

Overall, smart contract migration enables businesses to improve the rails on which they run their blockchain operations and resolve scalability, cost, and security problems. Companies can continue to benefit from blockchain technology by choosing a more advanced or suitable platform but at the same time minimize risks and enhance performance.

Pre-Migration Considerations

Before you start the process of migrating smart contracts to a new blockchain, there’s a lot to be done around the evaluation of your current contracts as well as your existing blockchain platform. The pre-migration phase is the most important phase in which the guts will be laid for smooth migration into the new platform which will satisfy both technical and business needs. The points to make before starting the migration chain are highlighted below.

Assessing Current Contracts and Platform

The pre-migration phase starts by appraising your present smart contracts and evaluating their performance on the present blockchain. After that, you need to audit the contract code thoroughly, measure your own performance metrics, and make sure the platform is in fact helping you hit your operational goals.

• Contract Functionality: First of all, go through your smart contracts to see what your existing functionality is. Do they work as you expected, and do they fulfill the requirements of your decentralized applications? Identify what is wrong with the code; what is limiting, what is inefficient, or what is logically wrong with the current code. One reason this evaluation is important is because you’ll probably need to make changes or upgrades to your code before migrating to the new blockchain and you need to make sure that code will be compatible.
• Performance Metrics: Secondly, analyze how your smart contracts perform on the present blockchain. Look at the transaction speed and the amount of gas fees you are willing to pay as well as the network congestion in order to confirm if the platform can still be able to accommodate your business needs. If your contracts are running slowly or paying high fees in transactions, maybe it’s time to consider a more scalable or cost-efficient platform.
• Data and State Preservation: In addition to preserving data & state, preserving smart contract migration is one critical aspect. Maybe it just has some critical business logic or transactional data on contracts that have to be securely migrated. By determining how simple or difficult it will be to migrate not only the contract code but also the relevant data to your new blockchain. Oracles or cross chain bridges could be very valuable tools to ensure that data integrity is not ruined during migration.
• Legal and Compliance Checks: When migrating, you need to do legal and compliance checks on contracts before too. The regulations that will make up the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts are likely to differ from one jurisdiction to another. Make sure your contracts fit with regulatory requirements in both the new and the current platform. It can be a problem if you’re not going to extremes because it’ll cause legal trouble or fines. Along with that, make sure that the new blockchain platform meets any associated data privacy or security regulations.

Thoroughly evaluating your existing contracts and the performance of today’s platforms will give you a good idea of what you are managing, allowing you to catch potential future issues before you get started.

Choosing a New Blockchain Platform

Once you have evaluated your existing contracts and your current chosen blockchain platform, then you select a new blockchain that supports your smart contracts better. A secure, scalable, interoperable platform depends on many factors.

• Security: When choosing a new blockchain for your smart contracts, security is a huge priority. As a result, you must guarantee that the platform comes with strict protocols that will guarantee the security of your contracts against vulnerabilities, hacks, or attacks. Platforms that would help minimise the risk would feature advanced security features such as multi signature accounts with decentralized governance or on chain audit. Also, ask yourself if the blockchain is dependable against usual attacks like the 51% attack or smart contract vulnerabilities.
• Scalability: Another important scaling factor is crucial for firms with high transactions. If you are to scale, you need a blockchain capable of handling thousands of transactions per second, without them coming at a high fee and not congesting the network. For those already using a platform that goes slow on transaction speeds and network bottlenecks, migration to a more scalable solution makes sense. Other popular choices for scalable blockchain usually come in the form of platforms such as Solana, Avalanche, or Polygon, which are built to be able to handle greater throughput at an associated lower cost of operation.
• Interoperability: Interoperability, on the other hand, is the ability for your smart contracts to interact together with other blockchains, or decentralized applications easily. As you decide the platform you want for your new blockchain, you need to ask yourself how fast your contracts can be assimilated into other blockchain ecosystems. If you play in an environment where cross-chain communication matters, there are platforms that support interoperability protocols like Cosmos or Polkadot to look at. They make it easier with easier integration and data transfer between different blockchain networks, with better long-term flexibility.
• Developer Support and Ecosystem: One other key factor when picking that new blockchain is the developer support and the strength of the ecosystem. It’s easier to develop, deploy and manage your smart contracts if you have something like a well established blockchain platform, backed by a strong community, developer tools, and governance. The second of two categories of platforms that I support are those that offer an ecosystem that is growing, and which may also include additional available resources to help with the long-term success of your project including grants, developer tools, categories of third-party services, etc.
• Cost Efficiency: Always remember that transaction fees and operating costs are always an important factor – especially if you are conducting many smart contract transactions. Finally, you should be able to assure yourself that the new platform you select would have a suitable cost-effective solution with lesser fees and even energy consumption. Businesses will have to consider reducing operational expenditures with platforms like Binance Smart Chain or Tezos because such solutions have the advantage of lower fees.

Finally, the decision to move to another blockchain platform requires both the evaluation of current smart contract performance and the selection of a new platform where security, scalability, and cost efficiency are improved. Addressing the above pre-migration considerations will help verify the new blockchain is fit for purpose as your business grows and your smart contracts continue to work as you expect them to in the new environment.

Steps to Migrate Smart Contracts

Moving smart contracts from one blockchain to another is a difficult process which entails proper planning, code tweaking and very thorough testing. This section outlines the steps below in a structured approach to creating the switch to the new software, so as to be as smooth as possible with limited risk.

Step 1: Review and Plan

To increase the chances of a successful migration, great care is needed in the review and planning phase before any technical work is started. Here, you basically need to evaluate your existing smart contracts, determine what changes or updates are needed on them and find out whether these smart contracts are compatible with the new blockchain platform.

• Assess Current Contracts: Start by looking into what smart contracts you already use and decide on which components will have to be ported into the new platform. Have a look at your contract functionality laid bare and what can be optimized or refactored. For example, even if the new blockchain's features do not match the new logic or processes, for instance, outdated logic or inefficient processes may be modified to be adapted to the new logic and processes as dictated by features of the new blockchain. Determine the operation needs, decide if the contracts are operating as they are specified.
• Identify Dependencies and Compatibility: The features of the blockchain they were built on often play a big role in the ability of smart contracts to work. When reviewing, we must determine if these solutions will be supported on the new platform. For example, check if the new blockchain supports the same transaction handling — consensus mechanism and data storage. For example, if certain features you need are not available you'll either have to adapt your code to the new environment or choose other solutions the platform gives you. Additionally, determine all off-chain dependencies, like Oracles that supply off-chain data and that they are compatible with the new blockchain.
• Planning the Migration Process: Once you have a good grasp of the current state of your contracts then you can create a comprehensive migration plan. Provide details of each step in the process, from code adaptation through to deployment and set time lines and milestones for each step of the process. Make sure to assign responsibilities to your development team alongside providing them the tools and resources to work with, in case of such problems. If you have a clear and detailed migration plan then you can avoid disruptions and everyone involved in the project clearly understands the scope of the project.

Step 2: Code Adaptation and Testing

The next step of migrating smart contract component is to change your existing code according to the environment of new blockchain. This phase not only demands that you change the code itself, but require that you extensively test the contracts to make sure they all still work without compromising on their security in their new home.

Adapting Code for the New Platform: 

Each blockchain has its own characteristics which includes the syntax and operation rules and hence smart contract code has to be tailored to fit its new environment as mentioned above. Look at the coding languages being used on the new blockchain and check to see if there are any differences in how your code will be executed — or what gas or consensus algorithm is used that will make a difference. In our example, we’re migrating from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain; both networks use the same Solidity, however, they could have a difference in calculating gas fees or executing a certain function.

In a few cases, such smart contracts will have to be refactored to exploit the power of the new blockchain. If the new platform has greater scalability or lower transaction fees opt your contracts logic to reduce GARAGE and increase performance. Then the same blockchain must have the infrastructure to support the external dependencies in the contracts if there are such dependencies such as APIs or Oracles.

Testing for Bugs and Vulnerabilities: 

The crucial part of the migration process is ensuring the adapted code works like it should (without any bugs or security vulnerabilities); part of that process is testing. Unit test the contract on the new blockchain then integration test it to ensure that it meets expectations. Every single feature of the contract is supposed to be tested, and that includes edge cases and weird scenarios.

During this stage security is of paramount importance, vulnerabilities in the contract could mean it gets attacked, money disappears or a data breach occurs. Additionally, it also provides you the power to work with tools like static analysis and simulate attacks to see how safe the contract truly is if an attacker attempts to attack. You can also test how fast the performance is, how the gas is spent, and how the execution of a contract works, but this also in different situations. Testing thoroughly decreases the chance of a contract failing during launch and the risks of a vulnerability being attached to a contract and being used against its users.

Step 3: Deployment on New Platform

After the code has been prepared to be suited to operate on the new blockchain and rolled out and tested thoroughly, then the smart contracts are deployed to the new blockchain. During this phase, it is run best practices to increase the chances of deployment success and confirm that contracts are working as intended once live.

Deploying the Contract: 

The tools and method of deployment for a smart contract into a new platform are an important consideration. Currently, flask brings up a web server and a blockchain specific blockchain tool to deploy the contract, Truffle for ethereum or Remix for the others. You must use the proper tool chain to deploy your code and make sure that the code deployed is in line with the platform guideline about how smart contracts get deployed.

In terms of deploying you will want to be taking into account the transaction fees (gas costs) and make sure you have enough resources assigned for the deployment process.  So if you deploy a contract that has a lot going on with a lot of logic to it, you will spend more gas fees. Deploy only when the network is not busy, to avoid peak network congestion which can cost you more money or extend your waiting time.

Verifying Deployment Success: 

After deploying a smart contract you are supposed to verify not only that the migration went well and actually happened, but also that the contract behaves as it is supposed to on a new platform. The contract’s deployment, and even its operation, can be tracked using blockchain explorers. You will want to monitor the first transactions to make sure that they are getting executed correctly, without errors or behaviors that you weren’t expecting.

Also, you use blockchain auditing tools to do a final audit for the deployed contract. It is done to detect any last minute missed issues in testing. Verification tools such as Etherscan make it easy to validate the state of a contract for blocks on Ethereum based chains, to ensure the migration was done properly.

Step 4: Monitoring and Optimization

After the smart contracts are deployed, continuous monitoring and optimization will be worked in the last direction of the migration process. After sending the contracts to the blockchain, post-deployment maintenance is necessary to make sure the contracts are running as well as they possibly can and remain secure over time.

Verifying Deployment Success: 

After deploying a smart contract you are supposed to verify not only that migration went well and actually happened, but also that the contract behaves as it is supposed to on a new platform. The contract’s deployment, and even its operation, can be tracked using blockchain explorers. You will want to monitor the first transactions to make sure that they are getting executed correctly, without errors or behaviors that you weren’t expecting.

You also need to watch out for the rest of the contract interactions with users or other contracts in order to watch out for surprises. Establish automated notifications to your team when some unusual thing happens, for example, a rise in failed transactions or contract execution errors. Periodic performance reviews help us to see where we can continue to optimize.

Optimization Suggestions: 

Taking another step, applying the data of performance collected in the monitoring, they can develop optimization methods to amplify the contract’s proficiency and diminish operational charges. For instance, if the gas usage of the contract is above what’s expected, try minimizing gas usage to reduce fees, or batch processing in some operations.

Other than performance optimization, periodically updating the contract with the help of new features or security patches may also be a sensible thing to do when the new blockchain platform evolves. The contract is security maintained and upgraded, on a regular basis, for continued security as well as alignment with business needs.

In the case of migrating smart contracts onto new blockchain it is supposed to be done in well planned and structured manner. As long as you (follow the steps outlined here; review and plan, adapt the code and test, deploy on the new platform, then monitor and optimize post deployment), then your decentralized applications will have a good and seamless code migration while you are transitioning from one platform to another.

Common Challenges and Solutions

Challenge 1: Compatibility Issues

In particular, one of the most challenging things when migrating smart contracts to a new blockchain is that there may be some incompatibilities that come from languages, protocols, and even consensus mechanisms being different. One-language smart contracts may not function successfully on another platform.

Solution: To solve this you will need to refactor the contract code to comply with the new platform’s requirements. There are crosschain migration tools such as Polkadot’s Substrate or Cosmos SDK, which exist to avoid compatibility problems. So the migrated contract should be tested thoroughly on the new platform it is migrated to so the new functionally works as expected.

Challenge 2: Data Loss and Security

During blockchain migration, there is a major risk of data loss and security vulnerabilities. Lost valuable data would cause operational setbacks in smart contracts since they often include valuable data.

Solution: Before migrating, backup all smart contract data and transaction histories at least once, so you don’t lose data. Require data be transferred encrypted over a communications channel, and auditing tools to determine vulnerabilities in place.  Sandbox testing can find security issues early to avoid it when the contract goes live.

Challenge 3: Legal and Compliance Concerns

Legal hurdles are created as a result of regulatory differences between jurisdictions in which blockchain migration occurs. Penalties or invalidation of the contract could lead to non-compliance.

Solution: Make sure you consult with legal experts to ensure you’re compliant with local regulations — including GDPR data privacy law. Additionally, you want to review the governance structure of the new platform to make sure that your smart contract complies with the new platform’s legal structure.

Best Practices for a Successful Migration

Though preparation is necessary to ensure a smooth smart contract migration, best practices are made to be followed. Below are some key tips to help you successfully migrate your smart contracts to a new blockchain platform:

1. Plan and Review: Start by conducting a thorough audit of what contracts you already have, understand how well they’re actually performing, and determine what needs to be upgraded. Having a defined migration roadmap with clear milestones and timelines will help you, keep track and fix some of the missing potential challenges ahead of time.
2. Optimize Code for the New Platform: Change your smart contract code to get good use out of the new blockchain platform features. Code should be written so that it runs in the new environment just as you would set a program up to work on a new computer and account for any platform dependent requirements. Don't rush this process – skipping some key optimization steps at this stage can make it painful later.
3. Thorough Testing: Once you are done with it, test it thoroughly in a sandbox instead of deploying the same migrated contract. The consequence of this is you can find, fix bugs, security issues, performance bottlenecks with UX impact, without impacting on live users. To decrease the chances of errors at deployment time, you should test both functional aspects as well as security risks of a web application.
4. Prepare Your Team and Infrastructure: Make sure that your development team is all trained on the tools and best practices that the new blockchain platform provides. Depending on what’s best for your case, integrate with new APIs, use different Oracles, or increase the network capacity to absorb greater transaction volumes.

By leveraging these best practices, you can be sure that your migration happens with a minimum of fuss, and with the performance, security, and functionality of your smart contracts operating smoothly on the new blockchain.

Conclusion

Migrating smart contracts to a new blockchain platform is a complicated process: You need to perform migration planning, Smart Contract code adaptation and tons of testing. In the course of this article we have gone through the main steps of smart contract migration: Knowing your current contracts, adapting the existing code for the new platform, testing them for both compatibility and security and deploying the code on the new blockchain. We also spoke about the common problems that would come with people's use of it, compatibility problems, data loss, legal issues and how to overcome these problems.

There cannot be overemphasized the significance of good preparation and testing. A successful migration starts with a thorough audit of contracts you already have, then meticulous work on optimizing code and testing, until you are confident that the migrated contract works fine in the new environment.  But that aside, I address them early to prevent risks, and outages of business operations, and to enable smart contracts to retain integrity.

Considering a migration of your smart contracts but don’t know exactly where to start, or want to make sure it is done right? Consulting the blockchain experts could be the difference. Professional services are also available to assist you to navigate through the migration complexities and assure your smart contracts function well, securely, and in accordance with the requirements. If you’re looking to migrate your smart contract to a new blockchain platform, contact our team today to see how we can help you migrate seamlessly.