technical: environments

src/SUMMARY.md

@@ -39,10 +39,10 @@
 
 - [Environment Setup](./technical/env/environments.md)
 
-  - [Tooling](./technical/env/tooling.md)
   - [Tilt](./technical/env/tilt.md)
   - [Wormhole Local Validator](./technical/env/wlv.md)
   - [Testnet](./technical/env/testnet.md)
+  - [Tooling](./technical/env/tooling.md)
 
 - [Contract Development]()
 

src/technical/env/environments.md

@@ -1 +1,37 @@
 # Choosing an Environment
+
+Sending a cross-chain message through Wormhole involves initiating a message on chain A, the Wormhole contract on chain A, the Guardian network, receiving a message on chain B, and the Wormhole contract on chain B.
+
+### Devnet
+
+Wormhole provides two different local development environments to simulate these different elements. Below are those two options and the high level pros and cons of each.
+
+1. [Wormhole Local Validator](./wlv.md)
+    - Pros
+        - Lightweight, low system resource demand
+        - Good iteration times
+        - Can be added into an existing blockchain development setup
+
+    - Cons
+        - You may end up reinventing the tilt/testnet environment as you add more components
+
+2. [Tilt](./tilt.md)
+    - Pros
+        - Out of the box support for the many components needed to develop across the heterogenous blockchain space
+        - Consistent development environment, where contracts deploy deterministically & everything is already linked up
+        - Ability to easily turn containers on and off as needed
+
+    - Cons
+        - Relatively high system requirements. Specifically is RAM intensive
+        - Iteration requires docker container rebuilds, which can be slow
+        - Most blockchains are 'fresh', and thus may require you to deploy your own contract dependencies.
+
+### Testnet
+
+To test your application on the various testnets, there are Wormhole contracts and one Guardian node deployed. You can find the contracts [here](../../reference/contracts.md) and the rpc node [here](../../reference/rpcnodes.md).
+
+Note that because there is only one Guardian node deployed for testnet, there is a small chance that your VAA will not be processed. This rate is _not_ indicative of performance on mainnet where there are 19 Guardian nodes watching for transactions.
+
+### Mainnet
+
+To deploy to mainnet, you can find the contracts [here](../../reference/contracts.md) and the rpc node [here](../../reference/rpcnodes.md).