## Minting Fake USDC USDC is a little more complicated than most tokens. We're going to learn how to mint fake USDC using a Python script. USDC's contract is very centralized. Circle controls the contract and has a lot of governance utilities. We can take advantage of this centralization to "mock" ourselves some USDC using the `boa` library. **Setting up our script** We can use the `boa.env.prank` function to pretend to be the owner of the USDC contract. ```python with boa.env.prank(usdc.owner()): ``` We can now call the `updateMasterMinter` function with our address. We'll also set a starting USDC balance. ```python with boa.env.prank(usdc.owner()): usdc.updateMasterMinter(boa.env.eoa) usdc.configureMinter(boa.env.eoa, STARTING_USDC_BALANCE) usdc.mint(boa.env.eoa, STARTING_USDC_BALANCE) ``` We also need to include the USDC ABI. We'll use `mox explorer` to get the USDC ABI. ```bash mox explorer get 0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48 --save --name usdc ``` **Let's run the script** First, we'll need to make sure that our environment is set up to run our script. ```bash mox run setup_script --network eth-forked ``` We can see in the terminal that our script is running and that we have our starting USDC balance. ```bash USDC balance before: 0 USDC balance after: 1000000000 ``` We've now successfully minted ourselves some fake USDC! **Depositing our USDC** Next, we'll learn how to deposit our fake USDC into Aave. But, first we'll need to create a script called `deposit.py`. ```python from boa.contracts.abi.contract import ABIContract from typing import Tuple from moccasin.config import get_active_network import boa STARTING_ETH_BALANCE = int(1000e18) STARTING_WETH_BALANCE = int(1e18) STARTING_USDC_BALANCE = int(100e6) def add_eth_balance(): boa.env.set_balance(boa.env.eoa, STARTING_ETH_BALANCE) def add_token_balance(usdc: ABIContract, weth: ABIContract, active_network: Any): weth.deposit(value=STARTING_WETH_BALANCE) with boa.env.prank(usdc.owner()): usdc.updateMasterMinter(boa.env.eoa) usdc.configureMinter(boa.env.eoa, STARTING_USDC_BALANCE) usdc.mint(boa.env.eoa, STARTING_USDC_BALANCE) print(f"USDC balance before: {usdc.balanceOf(boa.env.eoa)}") print(f"USDC balance after: {usdc.balanceOf(boa.env.eoa)}") def setup_script() -> Tuple[ABIContract, ABIContract, ABIContract, ABIContract]: print("Starting setup script...") # 1. Give ourselves some ETH # 2. Give ourselves some USDC and WETH active_network = get_active_network() usdc = active_network.manifest(named='usdc') weth = active_network.manifest(named='weth') if active_network.is_local or active_network.is_forked: add_eth_balance() add_token_balance(usdc, weth, active_network) def moccasin_main(): setup_script() if __name__ == "__main__": mocassin_main() ``` Let's go ahead and run this. ```bash mox run deposit.py --network eth-forked ``` And, you should see in the terminal that we have a successful deposit. We've now learned how to mock our own USDC and deposit it into Aave.