Arbitrum Stylus Mainnet Launch Opens Web3 to Traditional Coders

Offchain Labs, the main developer of the Arbitrum blockchain and Stylus, has announced the launch of the Arbitrum Stylus mainnet, a backwards-compatible virtual machine designed to support Web3 decentralized application (DApp) development.

Stylus allows developers of various coding skills to build on Arbitrum using the popular WebAssembly (WASM)-compatible languages. The integration is expected to launch powerful Web3 applications and use cases with less gas bill.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Korea Blockchain Week conference on September 3, Offchain Labs co-founder and chief scientist Ed Felton explained that Stiles will unify the two main ways of writing smart contracts on the blockchain: the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and traditional programming languages. Like Rust, C and C++.

Felton explained how layer-2 scaling solutions are beginning to break out of EVM limitations by leveraging additional capabilities from new languages:

“Now developers have the choice to develop their contracts in any number of ways, and they all work together on a single chain in a fully interoperable and fully scalable way.”

He added that the stylus' multilingual support encourages developers to build on Arbitrum “whichever tool makes the most sense for them.”

Stylus programs run 70 times faster than EVM

In a parallel announcement, Steven Goldfeder, CEO and founder of Offchain Labs, added that developers can use Stylus to expand their existing market offerings.

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In addition to new standard developers entering Arbitrum, Felton said some stylus programs have outperformed programs built on EVM, particularly programs that require more computing power.

“We've seen applications that are up to 70 times faster, which means you can do 70 times more within the gas limit. And that opens up some types that are very expensive or not possible on an EVM.”

As a result, Stylus DApps can perform more transactions within the gas limit, thereby reducing the overall cost, meeting the demand for performance and reliability of smart contract languages, while at the same time expanding the design space for onchain applications.

Future efforts to unite the developer community

Offchain Labs plans to integrate other popular protocols such as ZK-proofs into Arbitrum, which currently require high cost and computation. Sharing his future version of Web3, Felton added:

“I think the future is a hybrid protocol that includes some Optimism and some elements of ZK, even better than pure Optimism or pure ZK.”

He believes that a hybrid protocol will be more economical in a non-specialized environment. Therefore, Felton speculates that the cost reduction of the stylus will enable the creation of more sophisticated decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

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