Offchain Labs's Arbitrum Stylus Goes Live
Offchain Labs announced the public testnet and code release for Arbitrum Stylus on August 31, 2023. This new framework is designed to work on Arbitrum Nitro chains, allowing developers to build smart contracts using both Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) tools and WebAssembly (WASM)-compatible languages like Rust, C, and C++ . Stylus aims to significantly reduce gas costs and enable new, resource-intensive blockchain applications. The open-source Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available for developers.
One Chain, Multiple Languages
Arbitrum Stylus is designed to be a «one chain, many languages» solution. It allows developers to use traditional EVM languages like Solidity alongside WASM-compatible languages such as Rust, C, and C++. According to Offchain Labs, this feature expands the potential developer base from approximately 20,000 Solidity developers to millions who are proficient in Rust and C languages.
Efficiency and Cost-Effectiveness
Stylus claims to offer over 10x improvement in computational speed and over 100x improvement in memory efficiency compared to traditional EVM-based solutions. These efficiency gains are expected to translate into significantly lower gas costs for executing smart contracts. Offchain Labs states that allocating megabytes of RAM in Stylus could cost 100–500x less than in Solidity.
New Use Cases Enabled
The efficiency gains are not merely theoretical; they open doors to new blockchain applications that were previously impractical due to resource constraints. These include alternative signature schemes, larger generative art libraries, C++ based gaming, and compute-heavy AI models.
Security Features
Stylus also aims to improve smart contract security with features like
Read more on blockchain.news
