Treehouse was building a next-gen protocol to disrupt the market by building the Decentralized Fixed Income Layer, enabling new fixed income primitives within digital assets. However, they needed a safe, scalable, and team-wide testing environment to ensure their smart contracts were secure and efficient before launching to the public. Testing on public testnets proved to be slow, risky, and difficult to manage, especially as the team worked to simulate complex token flows and DeFi mechanisms.

Treehouse recognizes the importance of time traveling in testnets for effectively testing smart contracts. While this feature is accessible via API, a user-friendly interface was important to empower non-technical team members to leverage this functionality more easily, enhancing collaboration and streamlining the testing and integration process.

Treehouse also required specific testing capabilities, such as the ability to impersonate externally owned accounts (EOAs) and multi-sig wallet contracts. These features were essential for simulating real-world scenarios and validating smart contracts and required a testing environment that could easily support complex configurations.

Treehouse worked with BuildBear Labs, a solution designed to provide private sandboxes for Web3 projects, eliminating the need for public testnets. This gave them the freedom to test in a secure, isolated environment that replicated real-world scenarios without the inherent risks and slowdowns of public networks.

To meet Treehouse’s unique requirements, BuildBear Labs' sandbox offered special sandbox configurations that allowed the team to impersonate both EOAs and multi-sig wallet contracts, making testing seamless and effective. In addition, BuildBear Labs provided programmatic set balance methods, enabling the team to adjust token balances during testing automatically, without manual intervention.

When Treehouse requested a more user-friendly approach for time traveling in testnets, BuildBear Labs responded by creating a Time Advancement plugin with a full UI. This allowed non-technical QA team members to control time advancement during tests without needing developer assistance, greatly simplifying the process.

BuildBear Labs also integrated the Blockscout explorer plugin, which provided visual token flow and debugging capabilities that are useful for both technical and non-technical team members. Moreover, Treehouse’s team found the native and ERC20 faucet functionality especially helpful, as it made testing simple, even for non-technical members.

The sandbox’s native explorer was also valuable to the team, allowing them to track and analyze blockchain data visually, which enhanced their workflow.

Another key benefit was BuildBear Labs’ speed and reliability, which enabled the Treehouse team to collaborate more easily and work faster across development and testing cycles.

Thanks to BuildBear Sandbox’s custom testing capabilities, the Blockscout explorer, and the range of specialized features such as the Time Advancement plugin with a UI, Treehouse was able to accelerate their testing  process, conduct thorough testing, and launch their DeFi protocol successfully. The product quickly achieved a total value locked (TVL) of $80 million, highlighting the DeFi community's confidence in Treehouse’s vision to reshape the fixed income market in the Web3 ecosystem.

Here’s what Treehouse had to say about their experience with BuildBear:
 

"We're pleased with the impact it's had on our internal testing processes. It has significantly simplified everything for us.”
 

“The token balances and indexed data like token holders were incredibly beneficial for our team, as it allowed us to visually debug our issues. Additionally, the Blocktorch feature has been helpful good to trace and conduct detailed debugging. Overall, the platform is a great addition to our testing process, and we strongly recommend development teams to use Buildbear."
 

With the help of BuildBear Labs’ Sandboxes, the Blockscout explorer plugin, and custom features like EOA and multi-sig wallet impersonation, programmatic set balances, and the Time Advancement plugin, Treehouse was able to safely test, integrate and launch their DeFi protocol with confidence. The seamless integration of these tools, combined with BuildBear Sandboxes’s speed and reliability, allowed their team to collaborate efficiently and push their product to market faster than anticipated.

As Treehouse continues to grow, their success is a testament to how BuildBear Labs’ sandbox solutions empower Web3 developers to innovate and launch cutting-edge products without the typical testing headaches.