What exactly is Arbitrum's latest development environment, Stylus?

Why we are looking forward to Stylus

This time last year, we took a huge step forward with the release of Arbitrum Nitro; today, we take another big step again with Stylus.

The core of Stylus is EVM+: bringing together the best features of the two worlds of EVM and WASM. Developers can still enjoy all the benefits of the EVM, including the ecosystem and liquidity, while gaining efficiency gains and access to existing libraries in Rust, C, and C++. All this without changing any of the way the EVM works. EVM equivalence is no longer an upper limit, but a starting point.

Compare EVM and EVM+

The ability to scale from ~20,000 Solidity developers to millions of developers using Rust and C while maintaining full interoperability and composability with traditional EVM contracts, enabling faster execution times, lower gas, New use cases — all on the most secure, most decentralized, and most widely used Ethereum L2 chain — and we’re excited to work with the community to explore future directions.

To help get the innovation off the ground, the Arbitrum Foundation provides an R&D grant to Stylus.

You'll be hearing a lot about Stylus from us over the next few months, so let's take a look at some of the highlights...

What is being announced?

Availability of the testnet for Arbitrum Stylus, a new technical implementation that allows developers to build smart contracts using Rust, C and C++, as well as the previously available EVM language. We also make the code public on our Github repository.

Start building with Stylus now, and you're invited to join the Stylus community on Discord to share your feedback and experiences.

Who is Stylus designed for?

Stylus is designed for experienced Web 3 developers interested in using additional WASM languages compatible with the Arbitrum chain such as Rust, C, and C++, as well as for developers who may be less familiar with blockchain development.

Stylus is for Solidity developers who want cheaper compute and memory for their dApps.

Stylus is for blockchain developers familiar with Rust environments like Solana and NEAR, who want the benefits of working in the EVM.

If you wish to deploy industry-standard cryptography libraries such as secp256r1 curves, Stylus is also for you.

What are the main features of Stylus?

Native Ethereum development using popular programming languages: Leverage popular WASM-compatible languages like Rust, C, and C++ to build your apps on Arbitrum’s large ecosystem, allowing you to combine popular Web 2 programming languages with the most widely used L2 smart contracts are combined.

One chain, many languages: Stylus allows you to use multiple programming languages on one chain. Developers no longer need to choose a blockchain that supports their preferred programming language; everything happens on the same chain.

Full composability: Solidity contracts and WASM programs are fully interoperable. If working in Solidity, developers can call Rust programs or rely on other dependencies from another language. If working in Rust, all Solidity features are available out of the box.

Faster calculations, lower costs: Using Stylus, Rust, C, and C++, WASM calculation operations run much faster than their Solidity equivalents. Computation has been improved by more than 10 times. Memory has been improved by more than 100 times.

Enabling new use cases: Stylus’ compute speed, improved cost efficiency and access to the mature WASM ecosystem opens up new EVM use cases that were previously impractical. The cryptography library can now be deployed as a custom precompiled, without permission. RAM-intensive generative art libraries, on-chaining of existing games written in C++, and compute-intensive AI models have all become more accessible.

Safer by Design: WASM programs written using the Stylus Rust SDK are more secure when choosing to re-enter. Re-entry is a common vulnerability in Solidity that developers can only try to mitigate. In Stylus, reentry is disabled by default unless overridden intentionally.

What is unique about Stylus?

Customized for Arbitrum: Stylus lets you develop in WASM while maintaining the maturity, security, and scalability of Arbitrum, the largest scaling solution for Ethereum.

Works with Arbitrum Orbit L3 Chain: For greater customization, Stylus can be used with the Arbitrum Orbit development framework, enabling you to support popular WASM-compatible programming languages on your dedicated Orbit chain.

Largest community of developers and partners: By supporting the Arbitrum chain, Stylus sits within the largest Ethereum L2 ecosystem, leveraging the support of its protocol, community, and partners.

Instant blockchain and Rust tooling support: Stylus lets you start developing right away, including block explorer and Rust CLI tooling support from the first testnet launch. Stylus also includes open-source SDKs for Rust, C, and C++, with the potential to extend to other languages such as Move, Sway, Cairo, and Go.

How does Stylus save money and time?

Reduce your gas costs: Compared to using Solidity, WASM programs are more efficient, further reducing gas costs.

Reduced memory and storage costs: In addition to lower gas costs due to more efficient computing operations, memory in Stylus is also more economical. The cost of allocating a few megabytes of RAM in Stylus is 1/100 to 1/500 of the cost in Solidity. Stylus can also automatically use Rust's borrow checker to safely reduce storage operations, further reducing expenses.

Use an existing library: No need to rewrite code to achieve the same functionality as a library you've already written. Existing libraries in Rust, C, and C++ can be deployed with minimal modifications.

What happens next?

Trail of Bits audit: Trail of Bits will audit the source code of Stylus to ensure the security of the contract and Stylus SDK.

DAO Voting: Since both Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova are managed by the DAO, whether to upgrade to support Stylus will be decided by a DAO vote.

Participate in our AMA: Join us on September 7th to check out our latest discussions on Stylus on YouTube and ask us questions.

Win Big Prizes at ETHGlobal NY: We’ll be awarding $20,000 in prizes to Stylus at ETHGlobal NY from September 22nd to 24th, so come join this fun event and meet the Stylus team!

Translation: @hicaptainz