Arbitrum Stylus: A Single Chain Supporting Multiple Smart Contract Languages

Summary:
• Arbitrum Stylus is currently on testnet and the team is confident that it is the ultimate solution to the programming language barrier.

Offchain Labs has released Arbitrum Stylus, a new tool that increases the number of languages used for creating smart contracts on Ethereum’s Layer 2 network. The goal is to make it easier for more people to create smart contracts that work with Ethereum by providing support for languages that can be translated to WebAssembly (WASM).

Why Arbitrum Stylus is a game changer

Many developers are limited from getting into blockchain ecosystem because they are only conversant with a small number of programming languages. The goal of developing Arbitrum Stylus was to provide a chain that supports multiple languages, allowing developers to use a single chain with a wide range of languages. Stylus enables the usage of both WASM-compatible languages and more conventional EVM languages, such as Solidity.

Stylus is based on the Layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum, which has a sizable developer and partner ecosystem. It plans to use this preexisting infrastructure to boost innovation and widespread adoption. As a dual virtual machine that can handle both EVM and WASM contracts while still retaining compatibility and provability over Ethereum, Arbitrum’s Stylus update is unlike anything else in the blockchain industry.

Because of Stylus’s increased computational speed, decreased cost efficiency, and access to the established WASM ecosystem, application cases involving blockchain technology that were previously impossible are now possible. WASM’s has a major advantage over EVM in that it has a faster runtime, which allows for quicker execution.

Stylus’ versatility with multiple languages and enhanced computational efficiency are particularly well-suited to cryptography, mobile applications, high-compute games, and AI projects.

Arbitrum Stylus will likely attract a wide variety of developers and projects, making a positive impact on the blockchain ecosystem by providing low-cost solutions and expanding support for more languages. Offchain Labs has released the Arbitrum Stylus source code and testnet and is actively soliciting feedback from the community. To further lower fees, the team is plans to introduce more programming languages to Stylus.